5-Year-Old Daughter Of Two Detroit Emergency Responders Dies After Contracting Coronavirus
The family of Skylar Herbert is mourning the loss of their beloved 5-year-old daughter who sadly lost her fight to coronavirus.
While speaking with The Detroit News, Skylar’s mother LaVondria Herbert shared that her daughter had complained of a very bad headache a month ago. She eventually tested positive for COVID-19 in March and later developed a rare form of meningitis and brain swelling. LaVondria said Skylar’s improvement had stopped, and that doctors said she was possibly brain dead.
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After spending two weeks on a ventilator, Skylar Herbert of Detroit died Sunday.
“We basically just knew she wasn’t coming back to us,” said the mother, The Detroit News reports.
The family noted that her first symptoms didn’t indicate coronavirus. LaVondria explained that when she brought Skylar to the pediatrician on March 23 for her headache that just wouldn’t go away with pain medication — she eventually tested positive for strep throat. Her doctor gave her antibiotics and sent the child home to rest.
But, because “she had been crying all night and saying the headache would not go away,” they “called the doctor back, and they told us that it takes the medication 48 hours to kick in and to give it some time, but because she was crying so bad, I told my husband we needed to take her to emergency because I just didn’t know.”
From there, they took her to Beaumont Royal Oak, and the doctors tested her for COVID-19, which came back positive the next day. They said her headache and mild fever were actually side effects of the virus. Shockingly, a day later the little girl was released, but the family returned to the hospital six hours later because her husband had also started experiencing symptoms.
However, while waiting in the car, Skylar began complaining about her “head hurting again and then she just threw up,” the news site notes. After taking her temperature — around 100 degrees — her mom held her in blankets because she was shivering. Skylar then had a seizure.
“(I told her) Skylar, look at your daddy, Skylar, look at your daddy,” Herbert said. “She came out of the seizure and me and her mother ran back into the emergency room,” Detroit News quotes.
Skylar was transferred back to the Royal Oak campus and admitted to the pediatric ICU for sedation and a series of tests, including a lumbar puncture. That’s when the family learned of the meningitis.
Sadly, little Skylar didn’t make it as she passed away on Sunday.
The news site says her parents do not know how Skylar contracted the virus and that she had no other health issues.
Both parents work in public safety: Ebbie has been a Detroit Firefighter for 18 years, LaVondria a Detroit Police Officer for 25 years. The daughter or the two first responders is believed to be the first child infected with the coronavirus to die in Michigan, The Daily Mail reports.
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