STROKES and CHILDREN

I just read this story.   It was in Dr. Sherri Tenpenny’s Newsletter.     (more below)

On a Monday in June, 2008, Victoria and her son, Jared, went for a walk near St. Catherine’s Park. Suddenly, he sat down, holding his head. She ran across the playground to find him dazed. “Mom,” he said. “My head hurts.” She gave him some water, and then asked him to try to stand.

Jared rose but quickly began to stumble in an almost drunken zigzag. His left leg did not seem to be working. His words remained slurred, his gaze vacant. Then his eyes rolled up in his head. Victoria scooped him up and ran one block to the ER.

Slurred speech, droopy left eye, stiffness, a sudden inability to walk or even stand on his own: if an adult had come into an emergency room with similar symptoms, the staff might have quickly picked up these classic signs of stroke. But this patient was 7. By the time we got to the PICU, Jared was already hooked up to a host of machines. The doctor told us, “The stroke has occurred in an area of the brain called the cerebellum.”

Children Don’t Have Strokes? Just Ask Jared

// JONATHAN DIENST

Published: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 3:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 5:16 a.m.

( page 1 of 9 )

My son Jared lay in a bed at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital, limp and pale, his 7-year-old body tethered to a tangle of tubes and monitor wires.

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EMERGENCY Jared Dienst had walked to a park with his mother after school let out one day in June 2008 when he complained of a headache. He soon began to stumble, and his speech was slurred.
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Alex di Suvero for The New York Times

A neurologist, Dr. Maurine Packard, stood to his left. “Jared,” I recall her saying. “Pay attention to what I say.” And then, in a strong, firm voice: “The barn is red.”

She waited a few moments and asked, “What color is the barn?”

Jared started to answer, then froze. My wife and I, sitting behind Dr. Packard, froze too. Two days before, he had been a happy, athletic second grader, a beautiful boy who loved playing baseball and basketball in the park. Now he couldn’t walk; he had to struggle to remember the color of a barn.

He tried again, and then replied in a weak, slurred voice.

“No,” Jared said. Dr. Packard nodded, as if that was the answer she had expected.

Before June 23, 2008, my wife, Victoria, and I had never heard of a child’s having a stroke. Most people, many doctors included, still haven’t. In the agonizing months that followed, we heard it over and over: “But children don’t have strokes.”

How little we knew. It turns out that stroke, by some estimates, is the sixth leading cause of death in infants and children. And experts say doctors and hospitals need to be far more aggressive in detecting and treating it.

I actually got physically sick when I read this!  You see I had a stroke at the age of 27.   I can’t prove it but I think I got a “Hot” vaccine when I was a child!   It is called soft kill.  Was it meant for me specifically?  No, I don’t think so.

The whole town got sugar cubes with polio vaccine.  We didn’t just get one we got three.  Everyone went to the high school after church three different times.  I doubt if everyone in town went but at the time it seemed like it.  I don’t know anyone that didn’t go.  We were told to!

I imagine that records were kept of who was there.  I wonder what happened to those records and who had access to them?  I do know that many of the people I went to school with have died early deaths.  Most have had cancer of some form.  The illnesses have ranged from Aids to Stroke.

I know first hand how my life has been affected.  I had three children and had time to live life some.  Jared is a little boy!  He hadn’t even got to play little league ball, have a girlfriend, or drive a car.  Will he be able to do these things?  I don’t know.  This story doesn’t tell what his prognosis is.  I do know he faces physical therapy and being labeled handicapped.

I doubt if Jared’s story will effect most as it did me.   This story should be hollered from the roof tops.  Dr. Tenpenny had this comment COMMENT: The story doesn’t mention Jared’s vaccination record. Could he have had a chickenpox vaccine or other vaccine days or weeks before this episode?

If anyone reads this please think about what vaccines can do and don’t take them!

Thinking About Survival

I’ve thought a lot about survival.  I know Officer Jack McLamb has a settlement around Kamiah, Idaho and Clay Douglas has plans for settlements in every county.  My question…..will it be better to have large numbers for more protection or two/three families for less visibility?  You need to make the best decision for you and your family.  If you have a farm or large piece of land could it support several families?  As I see things we are going to have to ban together to be able to make it through the coming days.

Are you ready to barter with your neighbors?  Do you even know your neighbors?  Do you store extra to barter?  Will you turn away your best friend when you have food or water and they don’t?  Are you going in your house or compound and lock the doors?

What preparations have you made?  Do you have storable food and seasonings. What about batteries, flashlights, seeds.  If you have kids do you have things they need, toys and medicines.  Speaking of medicines do you have a First Aid Kit?

If you are like me I lived in the county but am not a vegetable gardener or a canner so a book or two on the subjects will be needed.  This is just a short list and I saved the most important for the last.  YOUR BIBLE.

Can you add to this?  What you may think of as a no brainer someone else may not have thought of it.