When her daughter tested positive for coronavirus after severe symptoms, Jennifer Daly thought of the worst. At one point in her coronavirus battle, 12-year-old Juliet Daly had a heart attack and doctors performed CPR for two minutes before she came back.
“I died and came back,” Juliet told AP News.
Juliet’s battle with coronavirus started unlike most cases in her home in Covington, Louisiana. She didn’t have the symptoms many severe cases report, like breathing trouble. Instead, she had stomach pain and vomiting. Her mother, a radiologist, thought it was appendicitis or a stomach issue until her lips turned blue and her limbs went cold.
After going to the emergency room of a local hospital, she had the heart attack and was airlifted to Ochsner Medical Center in Jefferson, Louisiana. There, Dr. Jake Kleinmahon was one of many doctors that cared for young Juliet.
“Juliet came in as one of the sickest children we’ve taken care of with COVID-19,” Kleinmahon told AP News. The top chamber of her heart was not working correctly with the bottom chamber, and she was developing “multisystem organ failure.”
Juliet, like many other children infected with coronavirus, had different symptoms than adults infected with it. These symptoms include the abdominal pain Juliet experienced and in other cases, strokes and rashes.
After four days on a ventilator, she was able to breath on her own and was discharged April 15. Although she has a little trauma to her heart, Kleinmahon expects it to decrease over time and that Juliet will have a “totally normal life.”
And, as for Juliet, she hardly remembers anything from her intense battle against coronavirus. When she woke up, her mind was on something a lot of kids are on during quarantine — when she was going back to school.
Watch the video of Juliet’s amazing journey below.