March 2011. In the city of Paraná, in northeastern Argentina, Candela Giarda, 11, suddenly falls ill. High fever and uncontrolled seizures force her mother, Roxana Sosa, to run to the nearest pediatric hospital with her daughter. Within hours, Candela’s health deteriorates significantly and the boy falls into a coma and is put on a ventilator. Doctors identify a very serious and life-threatening refractory febrile seizure of epilepsy.
In the following days, Candela continues to have severe seizures. “Nothing worked,” her mother would later say to the Argentine press, recalling the episode. The complexity of the case led the doctors to decide to transfer the child to the intensive care unit of a hospital in Buenos Aires, belonging to the Favaloro Foundation, which, despite the distance of almost 500 kilometers, would be better prepared to face the situation. issue.
But Candela’s health continues to deteriorate. “Since we arrived in Favaloro, instead of getting better, she has gotten worse,” said her mother. At some point four months later, the doctors concluded there was nothing they could do. The boy’s life was decidedly lost. The expression used by the doctors was “imminent death”. At any moment it could happen, and it would inevitably happen. “They even told me to go back to Paraná, so that she would die in her house.”
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Source: Observadora
