As loving parents, we try to do everything we can to care for our children. Sometimes, this may mean helping them with needed help but at other times, it’s just showing affection to them.
It was affection that led to a problem with a young child named Breelyn. When she was born, she was happy and healthy but she fell very ill after someone kissed her on the mouth. She was only two days old at the time.
The person who kissed her had a cold sore, so she ended up with HSV encephalitis. Since she was so young, her immune system was not able to fight off the virus and it led to brain damage as the virus spread.
Her mother shared a video on the Special Books by Special Kids YouTube Channel. She said: “When parents say not to kiss your children, this is one of the reasons for sure.
“[Breelyn] was born healthy. She was fine. And at two days old, somebody was so excited to see her that they kissed her on the mouth, and two weeks later we started having seizures.”
The seizures caused a significant amount of brain damage for the little girl and she ended up with the Herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE). This rare disease only affects about more than 500,000 people every year.
The mother went on to talk more about the infection, saying: “The infection got into her brain fluid and it attacked her brain.
“It attack the left side of her brain mostly. It had just started moving over to the right side when we caught it.”
“More or less, the encephalitis ate away at her brain tissue.”
She went on to say that about 60% of the left part of the brain was damaged and 10% of the right side of the brain was damaged. Unfortunately, she is not expected to live until she is an adult.
Despite the difficulties she faced as a result of a single kiss, her mother said that she forgave the person who did it. She said that she knew it was an accident and they really didn’t mean it.