Seven-year-old Octaveia “Tavey” Mindrum rarely has anything worse than a cold or occasional stomach ache, her parents said. So when she developed a mild cough last week, no one was particularly alarmed.
“She had a slight cough and sniffles a few days before, but it was nothing to worry about,” said her father, Kristopher Mindrum.
Four days later, the Rozet girl’s blood oxygen level had plunged into the 70s, her heart was beating at more than 150 beats per minute, and she needed a continuous, high flow of oxygen to breathe.
At Campbell County Health in Gillette, a nasal swab tested positive for rhinovirus, which causes more than half of colds each year.
For most people, the rhinovirus causes only mild discomfort and goes away on its own, but on Wednesday morning, Tavey was strapped to a gurney aboard an AirLife medical plane bound for Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora.
Mindrum said she was admitted there for acute respiratory failure.
Good this morning
On Tuesday morning, Tavey visited the school nurse and first returned to class.
Early in the afternoon, the nurse called Mindrum to tell her that her daughter’s oxygen level was low. Deep breaths could temporarily bring it back up, but the nurse wanted her to be checked out by a doctor.
When Mindrum arrived, he said his oxygen saturation would not exceed 88% and his heart rate was over 130.
He took her to her pediatrician.
The medical assistant had barely started taking Tavey’s vital signs when she summoned the pediatrician, Mindrum said. His oxygen was in the 80s by then and his heart rate had climbed above 140.
The pediatrician sent them directly to the Campbell County Health emergency room.
By the time Tavey was hooked up to the monitors, Mindrum said her oxygen saturation had dropped into the 70s and her heart rate was in the 150s.
“It all happened in three hours,” he said.
The girl’s mother, Katie Boltin, remembers watching her daughter’s body begin to do the work her lungs couldn’t do.
Tavey had trouble taking a deep breath. His nostrils flared, his chest was pulled inward with each breath and the muscles in his stomach visibly worked to help him breathe, his parents said.
She was also turning terribly pale.
“My baby didn’t look like my baby,” Boltin said. The freckles normally scattered across Tavey’s face had seemingly disappeared against his pale skin.
“In my eyes, Tavey was fighting for his life,” she said. “She was so sick and there was nothing I could do to make her better.”
Emergency flight to Denver
At Gillette’s emergency room, Tavey was immediately put on oxygen and given it intravenously, her mother said.
Breathing treatments did not produce the improvement doctors wanted, according to Boltin. Neither do steroids. Eventually, Tavey was placed on high-flow life support.
“She couldn’t live without this machine or her levels would drop,” Mindrum said.
That’s when the tests came back positive for rhinovirus. His parents said imaging also showed abnormalities in his lungs, although they never received a definitive diagnosis of Gillette pneumonia.
Doctors determined Tavey needed more respiratory support than Gillette Hospital could provide and ordered him transferred to Children’s Hospital Colorado.
The family arrived at the Gillette emergency room around 2 p.m. Tuesday, Mindrum said. Tavey was airlifted around 10 a.m. Wednesday.
The delay frustrated and frightened Boltin as she watched her daughter continue to rely on life support, but she praised the paramedics and flight crew.
“I will be forever grateful to them,” she said. “The moment we arrived at the children’s hospital, I felt a calm come over my body, as if my daughter was going to live and be cared for. »
The specialists were waiting for Tavey when he arrived.
Within about 16 hours, her condition had improved enough that doctors could gradually wean her off the supplemental oxygen, her mother said.
Rhinovirus is high nationally
Tavey’s experience represents the extreme end of a common infection.
Wyoming does not publicly report rhinovirus cases as a standalone category on the state’s respiratory disease dashboard.
The Wyoming Department of Health’s dashboard tracks influenza, COVID-19 and RSV, while its Infectious Disease Epidemiology Unit conducts broader infectious disease surveillance.
Nationally, however, rhinovirus/enterovirus activity is high, according to the latest respiratory virus update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released Friday.
The latest respiratory virus update released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that rhinovirus/enterovirus activity is high across the United States.
Rhinovirus circulates throughout the year, but typically peaks in the spring, then late summer and fall. Most infections cause no or relatively mild symptoms such as a runny nose, congestion, coughing, sneezing, and sore throat.
Severe rhinovirus infections can cause wheezing and difficulty breathing, bronchiolitis, bronchitis, and pneumonia.
People with asthma, weakened immune systems and certain other underlying conditions are at greater risk, although serious respiratory illnesses can occur outside of these groups, according to the CDC.
That possibility was something Boltin said she never associated with rhinovirus until she watched her daughter become seriously ill.
“They told us it got into his lungs,” she said.
Boltin said doctors have explained to the family that the virus circulating this year can have far more serious consequences than its reputation suggests.
“It’s something that’s evolving and seems to have gotten worse this year,” she said.
There is no vaccine for rhinovirus or antiviral medication specifically approved to cure it. Treatment is usually supportive while the body clears the infection.
In Tavey’s case, Boltin said he learned that medications can mask symptoms and prevent the body from healing properly.
Hospitalizations
A US study of children aged 5 to 17 years seeking emergency or hospital care for acute respiratory illness detected rhinovirus or rhinovirus/enterovirus in 581 of 2,298 patients, or about 25%.
Among children whose infections were limited to a specific type of rhinovirus, hospitalization was common, particularly for rhinoviruses A and C, but the study only looked at children who were already sick enough to seek emergency or hospital care.
Another study in pediatric emergency departments found the presence of rhinovirus in 445 symptomatic children younger than 3 years who underwent breathing tests; 262 people developed lower respiratory infections and 231 were hospitalized.
More than half of children with rhinovirus-associated lower respiratory illness had no underlying medical problems.
The CDC has also documented how important the broader rhinovirus/enterovirus family can become during periods of high activity. In a 2022 wave, rhinovirus/enterovirus was detected in 1,492 of 5,633 children and adolescents enrolled in surveillance after seeking emergency care or being hospitalized for an acute respiratory illness.
The family also left Denver with another worry.
“They told us it could have triggered asthma for the rest of his life,” Boltin said.
Mindrum also said doctors mentioned the episode “could be the start of asthma.”
A major study has found that rhinovirus is one of the most common viral triggers of asthma attacks, and severe rhinovirus illness in children has also been linked in medical research to later asthma, particularly in children who already have an underlying predisposition.
What parents should pay attention to
Boltin said one of the things that struck her most was how ordinary Tavey’s illness seemed at first.
She said it can be easy for a parent to not notice severe respiratory distress if they don’t know what they’re seeing.
“You really have to watch their breathing,” she says.
Other warning signs include rapid or labored breathing, bluish lips or face, ribs pulled inward with each breath, dehydration, unusual sleepiness or lack of alertness, and symptoms that improve then suddenly worsen, the CDC warns.
Tavey was released from the hospital Thursday evening.
“She’s doing better now,” Mindrum said, adding that doctors have told her to avoid any physical activity that might increase her heart rate or make it harder to breathe.
She’s now back home in Gillette – and her freckles are back – although she hasn’t returned to school. His father said his oxygen saturation was in the mid-90s and doctors told the family to keep his activity light while he recovered.
“I can see my baby thriving again,” Boltin said.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at Gn Health
