MIAMI – A Florida Keys boy who was hospitalized for 19 days with multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), an illness associated with having COVID-19, is finally home.
Zane Wampler, 9, started feeling ill last month, according to his mother, and was hospitalized after suffering convulsions and an extremely high fever.
Zane’s mother, Leah Wampler, documented his journey on Facebook and described the toll the illness took on his body. At one point, she said Zane was on a ventilator.
Wampler described her son’s swollen eyes, heart murmur, and roller coaster recovery to Local 10 News.
On Tuesday, Wampler said Zane was well enough to be released from Nicklaus Children’s Hospital.
“We still have a lot of follow ups and visits with specialists but now that he is able to take his medication by mouth, we are able to taper them down at home,” she wrote.
Health experts say MIS-C is a serious condition that takes a toll on parts of the body like blood vessels and the heart.
“What we do know is that it affects children usually a week or two after they are exposed or after they’ve had the COVID infection,” Dr. Keith Meyer of Nicklaus Children’s Hospital. “Most children will present with gastrointestinal manifestations. They can have diarrhea, they can have abdominal pain.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers do not know what causes MIS-C. It is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs.
Wampler said Zane tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, but no one in the family had been diagnosed with the coronavirus and Zane never showed symptoms. Doctors said It is common for children to be asymptomatic.
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