A mother has issued a warning to other parents after her son came home from kindergarten with a common illness that left him with a glass stent in his eye.
Talitha Akamarmoi, from the NSW Central Coast, was in the middle of the COVID lockdowns. Her son continued to attend daycare as she was an essential worker.
Another parent sent their child to the facility with a cold sore—a common term for the herpes simplex virus (HSV).
“I was at home with him. Whether it was wounds or hand, foot and mouth disease, I was definitely careful,” she told news.com.au.
“I am a nurse. I washed my hands constantly.”
But unfortunately, that didn’t stop Mom from catching him.
On Akamarmoi’s first day back at work, she developed a red eye. She thought maybe she had conjunctivitis. So she treated it as recommended, but it got worse.
She went to the doctor three separate times. The third time she asked them to hide her eye. The next morning, “she felt like she was dying.”
Akamarmoi felt “sick inside and out” and her eye was swollen shut. There were wounds all around him.
She went to the emergency room and, while there, her GP called and confirmed what she had suspected.
She had herpes simplex keratitis – a viral infection of the eye. She was told she could lose her eye.
Her eye was healed, but it was really watery as a result. This meant she had to see an eye specialist, who tried to unblock her tear ducts. This required a needle in her eye and saline to wash it out, but the scar tissue that had formed meant it was a difficult task.
He told her she needed a stent – a small tube placed there to keep it open temporarily to extend the passage.
Akamarmoi had booked the surgery. But two months before the procedure, she underwent a colonoscopy. She discovered that she had stage three colon cancer.
“That dazed eye surgery. “I had to have a couple of surgeries and then six months of chemotherapy and I dealt with that,” she said.
“But by the time I went back to the eye surgeon, it was only 18 months later. He told me my tear ducts were completely blocked.”
She lived for more than a year “dribbling” tears on her cheeks. Her only option was to get a Jones tube. It is a glass or pyrex tube that is there forever that creates a passageway for her tears.
“This will be the rest of my life. But, it works. He said it was a ‘solution’ to a small problem,” she recalled.
Looking back, Akamarmoi said he liked the stent. Without it, people constantly thought she was crying.
When she was at work intubating people she couldn’t touch their eyes. Tears would well up in his eyes.
However, the HSV also spread throughout her sinus and she had sores in her mouth as well. It also made her sick with tonsils. Now, it explodes on her lips only when she is flooded.
Her story exploded on social media after she shared that it was all because a child was sent to daycare with a cold sore, saying it wasn’t just a “sore on your lip.”
She said that when a child is sick, they should stay home from these types of environments, saying she was amazed that anyone would choose to make money over their children’s health.
The video has divided its viewers. Some were in complete agreement with Akamarmoi. Others felt that she was blaming the parents unnecessarily. It was a reaction that surprised mom.
“I was just responding to a comment where someone was asking why there was a child in daycare with a cold sore,” she said.
“I completely agreed with him, because I would not be in this situation if the parent had not sent the child. I was just trying to educate people that it could be worse than you think.”
She made it clear she was talking about parents of preschool and daycare-aged children.
She said that as children get older, they can be educated about hand washing and not sharing food and drinks. This meant there was less risk.
Akamarmoi noted that once you get HSV — as an estimated 3.8 billion people worldwide under the age of 50 do — you have it for life. She noted that the first time someone is infected, they can become extremely ill.
“You want to prevent someone else from having to deal with this — especially a young child,” she said.
Akamarmoi noted that some people may not have the education or awareness of cold sores, which is why she’s sharing her story as a warning.
She said it can have dire effects – and in some cases even go to the brain.
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