A 12-year-old Louisiana girl “died for two minutes” while battling the coronavirus, which triggered a rare heart condition, according to a report.
During an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Wednesday, Juliet Daly said her near-death experience occurred when the virus caused her heart to fail. She added that she was lucky to survive.
“I died for two minutes,” Juliet said, three weeks after she was airlifted to a hospital in New Orleans with heart failure. “My stomach would not stop hurting. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to live. I wanted for it all to stop.”
Once at Ochsner Medical Center, Juliet was admitted to an intensive care unit, where she was placed on a ventilator for four days.
During her treatment, the girl’s heart “stopped” as doctors put breathing tubes down her throat, her mother said.
“They had to do two minutes of CPR on her,” mom Jennifer Daly told the program. “At that point, my whole world just crumbled.”
The girl’s rare heart condition was caused by inflammation and was triggered by the virus, her physician told GMA.
“COVID-19 can infect the heart and it can cause the cells in the heart to be unhappy and actually start to die,” the pediatric cardiologist said.
Prior to testing positive for the bug, Juliet had severe abdominal pain, but didn’t have typical COVID-19 symptoms like a fever, dry cough or labored breathing, her mother said.
“I think it’s really important to get the message out,” Jennifer Daly said. “I mean, we nearly missed it. If we hadn’t taken her to the hospital on time, I don’t think things would’ve turned out okay.”
Juliet was first admitted to St. Tammany Parish Hospital in Covington on April 6 with “heart failure due to COVID-19 and adenovirus fulminant myocarditis,” Jennifer Daly said on Facebook earlier this month. She was later airlifted to the New Orleans hospital before returning home on April 15.
“Juliet is very weak, but is expected to make a full recovery,” Jennifer Daly wrote one day later. “We are so grateful for the quick diagnosis and treatment at the St. Tammany ER. We are so incredibly grateful that they saved her life. We are so grateful for the wonderful care she received at Ochsner during this pandemic.”
The stress of Juliet’s struggle, however, hasn’t completely abated, as her mother still checks her pulse every night as she sleeps to make sure she’s still alive, Jennifer Daly told GMA.
“I’m so grateful the doctors were able to diagnose it so quickly and were able to get her treated,” she said. “We are all going through a tough time right now, some more than others, but like Juliet, we will recover.”
Doctors around the globe have recently raised alarms about a rare inflammatory condition of the heart and gut that appears to be afflicting some kids who contract the virus.