The message fell in my inbox at 10:51 p.m. on Monday. It was called “An Isolated Case – The Sequel”. Torn between anger and anguish, Isabelle Reid had strummed on her cell phone, in a room at CHU Sainte-Justine.
Bedridden near her: Hugo, her eldest son, aged 7. Under close medical observation.
At the end of September, I told you the story of Isabelle Reid and her son. Saint-Émile school, in the Rosemont district of Montreal, had just closed its doors due to a major COVID-19 outbreak.
Read “Protecting students outside schools … and inside”
The case had made headlines. Parents suspected the art teacher of having spread the virus. The teacher encouraged the students to take off their masks in class. She herself was not wearing it. His Facebook page was overflowing with conspiratorial delusions and anti-vaccine talk.
An isolated case, I was assured in the government.
Students had been infected in 11 of the school’s 12 classrooms. Hugo was one of them. Not too many symptoms, but her whole family had to isolate themselves for two weeks.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Isabelle Reid, mother of little Hugo, 7 years old
“It is an isolated case, but which ends up isolating a lot of people,” Isabelle Reid said ironically.
She never thought she would have to write the sequel.
***
For a month, Hugo was doing well. On Friday night, he told his mother that he wouldn’t eat candy on Halloween because he had a stomach ache. With friends, he had already eaten too much. “I thought it was cute,” she says.
On Saturday the fever started. Sunday, she continued, despite the Advil. Isabelle told herself that it couldn’t be COVID-19, a month later. At 6:15 a.m. on Monday, the thermometer was over 40 degrees. Direction Sainte-Justine.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY ISABELLE REID
Hugo, 7, in his bed at CHU Sainte-Justine
There, Hugo’s condition deteriorated. Rash of pimples, dark lips, purple eyelids, red eyes.
And, above all, very low blood pressure.
Hugo passed a battery of tests. Finally, the diagnosis fell: it was PIMS, or pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome. A disease linked to COVID-19 that affects children between the ages of 4 and 11. Symptoms appear several weeks after infection.
“Your body and your immune system are not happy to have had the disease,” Sainte-Justine’s chief immunologist told Hugo.
On the night of Monday to Tuesday, the child was transferred to the intensive care unit. His blood pressure was too low. Her coronary arteries were dilated. The heart was touched.
Isabelle’s almost gave up.
***
The Minister of Health announced on Tuesday the end of teleworking and the wearing of compulsory masks for high school students, as well as the return of dancing and karaoke.
Last week, he announced that vaccination would not be compulsory for school personnel.
There is an air of the end of a pandemic in Quebec.
But not for Isabelle Reid.
Tuesday, while people listened to the minister’s press briefing, she listened to the doctors’ instructions. After the immunologist, the cardiologist came by. Hugo will be okay, that’s the good news.
It responds well to treatments. He is still in Sainte-Justine, but has been discharged from intensive care.
***
In September, Isabelle Reid made a convincing plea for compulsory vaccination in primary schools. She hasn’t changed her mind.
In Quebec, everyone must be vaccinated to eat at restaurants, to train at the gym, to go to the movies. But in primary schools, where hundreds of unvaccinated children pile up every day, everyone does what they want.
About 90% of school staff are vaccinated. That leaves one in ten employees to infect those kids who haven’t asked for anything. It’s too much, says Isabelle.
The Ministry of Health claims to rely on a recommendation from Public Health and on the epidemiological situation which is improving in Quebec. “The consequences of COVID-19 in children are weaker and outbreaks are well controlled in schools,” the statement read.
It gives him a nice leg, that, to Isabelle.
***
As Health Canada prepares to give the green light to the vaccination of children aged 5 to 11, the young mother has a message for any parent who hesitates. “Dear parent, pay attention and listen carefully to my story …”
“I want to tell you, dear parent, that if your child contracts COVID-19, you have a 1 in 2000 chance of finding yourself in my situation. This is the figure given to him by the immunologist from Sainte-Justine.
That’s quite a bit higher than the odds of hitting the 6/49 jackpot.
Or get sick when you are fully vaccinated.
It’s true, children suffer less from COVID-19 than adults. But that’s not what matters. The important thing is to remember that children can get the virus. They can even, in rare cases, die.
And the vaccine can prevent that.
He is sure. Effective. The data, checked and cross-checked by an army of scientists, prove it. The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. There is no need to hesitate.
Isabelle Reid, in any case, will be the first in line to vaccinate 5-year-old Alexandre. There was no question of letting him run the risk of suffering the same fate as his big brother.
***
The plastic arts teacher has not set foot at Saint-Émile school since the September outbreak. Parents do not know if she suffered sanctions.
The school administration and the Montreal school service center cannot comment on the employee’s file, since it is confidential information.
The teacher continues to post conspiratorial and anti-vaccine publications on her Facebook page. No later than October 28, she relayed an invitation to demonstrate against health measures in Montreal …
***
If Isabelle Reid tells her story, it is to convince parents that “this disease is serious”.
Even if the epidemiological situation is improving, even if the masks will soon drop in high school, even if the karaoke will resume service… it is not over. Not yet.
Nailed to his bed in Sainte-Justine, Hugo is proof of this.
“I must be an exception. I must be just a statistic. My son and I are not worth much, after all, because people will remember that I am an isolated case, ”says Isabelle Reid.
An isolated case who will have to give aspirin for the next three months to his child to restore his heart weakened by this syndrome still poorly understood. An isolated case that worries the idea that other complications are developing.
“Me too, when there was an outbreak at school, I thought it wouldn’t happen to us, it just happens to other people,” she says. But it fell on us anyway. ”
After that, she might have thought she was immune to bad luck. But no.
“It never crossed my mind that Hugo would suffer from post-COVID syndrome, because terrible stories like that, it really happens, but really just to others. ”