It is hard for Stephanie McCrery to talk about those 18 days.
There are no words in the English language for some of what happened, she says. But the Manor Township mom says people need to hear about this.
So she talks about her beautiful young daughter, Olivia, the 10-year-old Hambright Elementary fifth-grader with the big, blue eyes and light-up-the-room smile.
Who played soccer and swam, and loved to dance and sing. Who picked out clothes for her big sister and did cheerleading routines with her.
Who went from sick to dying in just 24 hours last February.
Who was hooked to a respirator. Who had drugs pumped in her and fluid pumped out of her. Who underwent dialysis and swelled to twice her normal slender size.
Who died, surrounded by her family and friends singing, praying, loving her fiercely and telling her it was OK to go.
Olivia McCrery died from the flu, and complications of MRSA, a type of bacteria that is resistant to common antibiotics.
Her mother does not want other kids to die from the flu. So Mrs. McCrery is urging parents to listen to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is recommending that all children get the flu vaccine this year.
"If I knew what I know now eight months ago, I guarantee you my children would have had flu shots," she says.
The reason the CDC is recommending the flu shot for kids is they are social creatures who don't always have the best hygienic practices, local doctors say. If they get the flu, they easily can transmit the illness to other kids in school, to their parents and to their grandparents.
And when kids, or other people, get the flu, it can knock them off their feet.
"It's not a cold," says Dr. Jennifer Ammons, of Roseville Pediatrics. "It's not getting the sniffles. It can be a serious illness."
Last year, 86 children died from the flu, according to the CDC. Pediatric flu deaths are increasingly also linked to other bacterial staph infections, including MRSA, the CDC notes.
What happened to Olivia McCrery is extremely rare, says Dr. Deborah Riley, of Infection Specialists of Lancaster.
People who carry MRSA bacteria don't know it but they can be at great risk when they get the flu. They can develop pneumonia and get very ill, Riley says.
"It is a rare event," Ammons says, "but it can be extremely devastating."
Says Mrs. McCrery: "Eighty-six sounds like a fairly small number but it's only a small number if your child wasn't one of the 86. If your child was one of the 86, it's unacceptable. It's the worst number."
What may be hardest to accept is that the McCrerys were not neglectful or careless about their children, and still it did not matter.
PROTECTING KIDS FROM THE FLU
• The Centers for Disease Control is recommending the flu vaccine for children ages 6 months to 18 years.• Children under age 9 may need two doses of the vaccine, a minimum of four weeks apart. Check with your doctor.• For those who are shot-phobic, the vaccine can be administered through a nasal spray called FluMist.,• Vaccinations should be done now, but may continue through January.
Last year, the CDC did not recommend the flu vaccine for healthy children.
And so McCrery, 45, who is a barber, and her husband, Todd, 48, who is a truck driver, did not think about getting the vaccines for Olivia or her older sister, Samantha, 15, who had been fully vaccinated for other childhood diseases. The McCrerys had never even gotten a shot themselves.
And Olivia was so full of life, so healthy and active.
Her illness began Feb. 20, with a sore throat. She saw her pediatrician two times in the next three days, as her sore throat persisted and she started running a fever.
Doctors examined her and did two strep throat tests, both which were negative. The diagnosis was that she likely had a virus.
After her second doctor's visit, Olivia laid in bed all that day, alternately sleeping and restless. Her worried mother stayed awake that night, listening for her daughter.
"It seemed her breathing was changing, her chest was heaving more," she says. "She looked so sick."
Around 4 a.m., Olivia called for her mom. Her breathing seemed more labored.
Mrs. McCrery was very concerned now. She took Olivia into the emergency room at Lancaster General Hospital. Doctors put her on oxygen and tested her for the flu.
The test was positive. Doctors said Olivia also had pneumonia in both of her lungs.
Mrs. McCrery was dumbfounded.
"There was a clock on the wall and I said, 'Nineteen hours ago, my daughter was at the doctor. How can this be happening?'" she says, noting that the pediatrician had carefully listened to Olivia's lungs and found no problem earlier that day.
By now, Olivia's oxygen levels were plummeting and her kidneys began showing signs of failure.
Things started happening very quickly.
Doctors told the McCrerys they were going to transport Olivia to Hershey Medical Center, which has a pediatric intensive care unit where she could be put on a respirator if necessary.
"We were absolutely losing our minds," Mrs. McCrery says.
Stunned and fearful, the McCrerys followed their daughter's gurney up to a rooftop helicopter pad, where they leaned down to tell her they were going to drive as quickly as they could to Hershey Medical Center.
"We gave her a kiss and said we love you," Mrs. McCrery says. "She took her oxygen mask off and said, 'I love you too.' That was the last time we saw her awake."
On the way to Hershey, a doctor called the McCrerys on their cell phone and said he was going to intubate Olivia. When they arrived, the doctor said when he inserted the tube, he could see Olivia's lungs were filling with fluid.
"He said, 'We're in trouble here. She's very, very sick,'" Mrs. McCrery says.
"To say this was a nightmare would not describe what this was," she says.
It was at Hershey that the McCrerys learned Olivia tested positive for MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
"I knew what MRSA was. It was horrible to hear those words," Mrs. McCrery says. "It was like being shot."
What the couple did not understand was how their daughter contracted the infection.
If you pick out 100 people, 40 will test positive for staph, says Dr. Lyn Finelli, the CDC's chief of influenza surveillance. Of those 40, two would test positive for MRSA.
You can carry the infection but, like Olivia, still appear perfectly healthy. But if you get a viral infection such as the flu, it damages the lining of the respiratory tract, making it easier for staph infections to attack.
"People think of the flu as being no big deal," Mrs. McCrery says. "But when your body is battling it, it can weaken you. It is in that state when MRSA can advance."
In the October edition of Pediatrics, CDC researchers, including Finelli, reported that from 2004 to 2007, there was a fivefold increase in flu deaths among children in which the child also had a staph infection, half of them MRSA.
In many cases, death rapidly followed. Most of the children were not fully vaccinated against the flu.
Though Olivia had been put on the best antibiotics from the beginning, she was struggling.
Still, she hung on for two more weeks. Doctors put her on a heart/lung bypass machine, to take pressure off her heart and lungs. When her kidneys failed, and her 80-pound body ballooned to almost 200 pounds, they put her on kidney dialysis.
At one point, her parents, who never gave up hope, thought things were improving. She opened one eye. She was able to get off some medicines. Her color improved.
"She was so spunky and so sassy," her mom says. "I used to call her my pistol full of vinegar. I thought, 'She's going to pull through this, I know she is.'"
But the blood thinners required for the heart/lung machine eventually turned against her and Olivia began bleeding internally.
"At the very end, the doctors said to us, 'There's really nothing more we can do,'" says Mrs. McCrery.
The McCrerys told the doctors they could take Olivia off the machine, "the hardest words we ever said."
At 6:45 p.m. Sunday, March 9, Olivia died.
"No human being should have to go through what Olivia went through," her mom says.
The McCrerys hope that other families learn from their experience and protect their children from the flu.
"Get your child vaccinated against the flu every single year," Mrs. McCrery says.
Dr. Finelli of the CDC says, "The flu vaccine is the single best method to protect people against the flu. ... If people get vaccinated they're not going to get flu and MRSA because they're not going to get the flu."
The time at Hershey was excruciating. So have been the days since then. The flu tore a giant hole in the McCrerys' life.
"We get up every single day," Mrs. McCrery says, "and face it every single day."
Staff writer Cindy Stauffer can be reached at cstauffer@LNPnews.com or 481-6024.
