Baby Gets HERPES After Stranger Kisses Her On The Lips, Devastated Mother Warns Parents
Jan 31, 2019 by apost team
Brogan Thomas didn’t think much about it when a stranger kissed her baby. But as it turns out, that stranger had a cold sore, and the infant is now afflicted with neonatal herpes.
Babies can become affected prior to birth, but they can also contract neonatal herpes after birth by coming in contact with a cold sore. This is what happened to Kaylah-May Merritt who is just one year old. The mother Brogan had been unaware of this risk and has now reached out to other parents on social media in order to warn them.
The kiss was a memory. Then, at some point in December, mom Brogan, who is just herself 22 years old, noticed that Kaylah-May was overly tired and just not acting like herself.
This continued for a few days despite that fact the regular routine for the baby hadn’t changed much at all. Not long after, the mother was disrobing the child when she noticed an abundance of marks all over her body. The spots were red and purple, and Brogan described it as if she’d be on fire. Brogan’s first instinct was to give the child a bath, but Kaylah-May screamed and acted oddly as soon as she touched the water.
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Brogan rushed Kaylah-May to an emergency room at a local hospital, and it didn’t take doctors long to identify that the child had contracted neonatal herpes. Both parents were tested and came up negative. It came from elsewhere.
Doctors explained that the disease could have been transmitted by a cold sore. That was when Brogan remembered the stranger and the kiss but wasn’t sure of any cold sore.
Cold sores are not uncommon. Most have had them from time to time, and they usually clear up in about a week. While they heal, however, they are quite contagious. They are particularly problematic if the person is afflicted with herpes.
A baby does not have a fully formed immune system and is thus highly susceptible. It was serious enough that if Brogan had waited any longer, the child could’ve died.
After preliminary testing, doctors recommended hospitalization, which lasted four days. After four days, the doctors allowed Kaylah-May to return home—largely to minimize stress—but had to continue making daily visits in order to give the child the injections she needed.
Once the injections were no longer needed, Brogan has to continue visiting the hospital once a week for additional testing and treatments. About three months into the process, a brain scan will be required in order to ensure that the child has not suffered any permanent brain damage due to the disease.
Although brain damage does not seem likely at this point, there is a tragic element in that the child will likely live with this her entire life. Herpes is treatable in babies, but there is no cure. She will have to manage the symptoms and hope that a cure is eventually developed in her future.
The general treatment is antiviral medication take intravenously, but treatments can be even more intensive and invasive depending on the severity of the symptoms. For Brogan, it is just too early in the process to tell the severity of the symptoms that she can expect going forward.
Even though she has been receiving ongoing treatment, the red and purple marks have yet to fade. The child still does not sleep well and tends to be uncomfortable when she is awake. The entire family has been under a significant amount of stress despite somewhat of a light at the end of the tunnel. Blessed to have such a healthy baby, mom Brogan never expected such an ordeal for her child.
That was what motivated Brogan to take to Facebook. She talked about how she was once the kind of mother who enjoyed people going gaga over her baby. Now, she’s fearful and more careful. Like her, many people don’t realize this serious affliction could occur from just a cold sore. She also warned people to be careful about touching babies in general whenever you’re not completely healthy.
Brogan’s original post has been reposted more than 32,000 times. It has also received more than 7,500 comments from people expressing their best wishes. There have also been comments from many people who didn’t realize how serious a risk cold sores could be to babies.
There was also a fair bit of anger directed toward the anonymous stranger. Should it not be instinct not to kiss a baby when you have a cold sore? We tend to think so. Of course, if the cold sore wasn’t distracting in the moment, then perhaps the person just got swept up in that moment. It’s difficult to judge without having all of the details.
This experience is so traumatic for both the baby and the parents that it’s hard to imagine. The kisser has taken a lot of grief on social media, but it’s likely that he/she was careless and ignorant, and there’s a good chance the person doesn’t even know the role he/she played. What do you think? Feel free to contribute your strong feelings or any similar experiences that you’ve had and to pass this along to your loved ones too.