SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (KSTU) — A Utah family says a rare life-threatening complication of COVID-19 put their 6-year-old in the intensive care unit.
Logan Trombley spent eight days at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital with multi-system inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) after being exposed to COVID-19.
“It was actually kind of weird because he didn’t have any symptoms,” Lona Trombley said.
Yet, four weeks later, the virus caused his body to essentially attack itself. Logan suffered from a fever, vomiting, fatigue and a rash.
“You could tell that he was going downward and it wasn’t getting any better,” said Eric Trombley.
Logan was air-lifted from St. George to Salt Lake City. ICU doctors stabilized the first-grader, but doctors told his parents to brace themselves.
“She had warned me ahead of time: ‘It’s going to seem like we are getting better, but there is going to be hiccups. That’s the way this virus works,'" Lona said. "We went to the pediatric unit and he had a relapse, so we had to up his medication and his steroids."
"The majority of children we are seeing this in were previously healthy,” said Dr. Erin Treemarcki, a pediatric rheumatologist at Primary Children’s Hospital and University of Utah Health.
Logan has a textbook case of MIS-C which attacked his heart, kidneys and liver.
Treemarcki said the hospital has treated 129 children with MIS-C since the beginning of the pandemic.
“What we understand is when you’re exposed to COVID-19, some children’s immune systems become activated from that exposure to COVID-19, and then weeks later, they develop this inflammatory syndrome,” said Dr. Treemarcki.
The best prevention, Dr. Tremarcki advises, is a COVID-19 vaccine, which was recently approved for young children.
“It was not fun,” said Logan.
“Just because you get past the COVID scare and you guys come out healthy, it doesn’t mean that you’re in the clear. There are side-effects,” Lona said.
Logan’s fatigue remains constant and he can only go to school for half of a day. His parents expect a cardiologist will need to monitor his heart for the rest of his life.
This story was originally reported by Hailey Higgins on fox13now.com.