She clutched her lifeless baby in deep stillness.
I was just a young boy when a young couple standing by the town's exit toward a small village (El Potrero, Sinaloa, Mexico) asked us for a ride. Once in the truck, the young woman, clutching her 2-month-old baby, told us how her baby had just died from what seemed a simple cold with a cough. No more words were said for the rest of the solemn journey.
I have a vivid recollection of that incident. Through my medical training later, I came to realize that the baby probably died from Pertussis (Whooping Cough). My interest in clinical medicine has always been with me. Medicine is the most sacred scientific journey. I am allowing you to enter my private world of Medicine (as I treat the poor), with the intent to educate and save lives. Saving your life is more important to me than all the money or power in the world.
The first case in the video is of a usually healthy 6-week-old with hay fever, allergic conjunctivitis with secondary bacterial infection and asthma. This infant had already been to a California sponsored HMO, Molina. The HMO doctor said that the baby was fine and told the parents to "just give him Tylenol®." This is a grave error since any child with a fever under the age of 3 months is at high risk for a life threatening bacterial infection and the fever should not be suppressed with Acetaminophen (Tylenol®). Parents should immediately contact their doctor if a neonate has a fever, especially if he is not feeding or refuses to suck.
The mother reported that she felt her baby "hot" or febrile the night before. Since I treat a high-risk population, I often assume the worst-case scenario. I treated this 11-pound infant with Ampicillin 150 mg IM and Dexamethasone Phosphate 2 mg IM and his outpatient medicines included Erythromycin Ethyl Succinate Suspension 200 mg/5cc (against Pertussis) at 1 cc tid; I followed him the next day. By that night, however, the infant was well. All infants under age six months are highly susceptible to Pertussis, a ubiquitous bacterium. In my experience, if a child is well two weeks after his second DTaP dose (2nd dose given at 4 months), the risk from Pertussis is very low thereafter until age 10 years (if properly immunized until age 7). None of my patients have died from SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome).
Pregnant women are often not properly immunized against tetanus and diphtheria (Td) during the prenatal period. Some experts feel that pregnant women should get the new Tdap, which is a vaccine against tetanus, diphtheria and PERTUSSIS, early in the third trimester. In this manner, she may passively immunize her child with IgG antibodies for the first six months of life. A doctor can easily check a mother's blood at six weeks after administering the vaccine Tdap to see if she developed protective IgG antibodies against Pertussis. DTaP is for children younger than 7 years of age. According the CDC, the Tdap vaccine should be given in the immediate postpartum period but this is infrequently done today. The CDC offers no specific guidelines regarding Tdap during pregnancy.
The second child in the video had allergic rhinitis (hay fever) with 2º bilateral otitis media and bronchial asthma. This child had also been seen by a Medi-Cal HMO and had been prescribed Pedia Care®. Pediacare®, Triaminic® and any combination Decongestant, Anti-histamine, Dextromethorpan and/or Guaifenesin provide no medicinal value and may put an asthmatic's life at risk (as does Promethazine DM). Many of you have seen the TV commercials that states "Mucus in; Mucus out" with Mucinex® and they show a child with a cough that sounds, to me, like an asthma cough as shown in the video. Mucinex® consists of Guaifenesin (the only available "expectorant") which has no known therapeutic value.
In the video you can see a little girl with Posterior Uveitis who suddenly lost her vision due to a parasitic infection of the eye, Toxocariasis, which can be acquired from dogs and cats. She was finally treated three after I first saw her, but it was too late to save her vision. Cat feces can transmit Toxoplasmosis gondii to pregnant women. Infants are at risk of developing severe Toxoplasmosis if born to mothers who become infected with Toxoplasma for the first time during or just before pregnancy. Patients with a weakened immune system via AIDS or Chemotherapy can also acquire severe Toxoplasmosis. "More than 60 million people in the United States may be infected with the Toxoplasma parasite."
The lady with the highly infectious "pink eye" recently died, unrelated to her pink eye, from Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Though I had made written recommendations to her providers, she never received any of the modern MS treatments.
Luis Lomeli MD
P.S. Do not self diagnose-see your physician!
Author: LuisLomeliMD
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