Prayers and happy thoughts for my neighbor

[jillg]

Yesterday one of my neighbors stopped by to ask me to work some magic. She told me to do whatever it is that I can do to help her daughter. Now that I have permission, I can ask for healing prayers.

 

Summer River Rain is a beautiful happy three year old girl. Recently it has been discovered that there's a lump in her arm. Her parents have been taking her to the doctor and they were told it MIGHT be lymphoma. She has elevated levels of LDH in her system, and has been having night sweats (that weren't worried about as her dad had had them until he was five).

She has had a chest xray and her lungs are clear which is a very good sign. She will be having the lymph node looked out and maybe taken out in the next few days.

 

Her mother believes, as I do, that if you think hard enough about something, you can think it into being. So we don't want this to be nothing and everyone think it is and think it into being.

 

But any prayers or healing thoughts, from any religious aspect are appreciated and wanted by her mom. I would have posted this before (another neighbor told me about Summer a couple days ago), but without her mother's permission, I didn't feel I could.

 

Summer is so beautiful and always happy. She's so sweet and loving (as are most three year olds). She knows something is going on, she has asked her mom to take the thing out of her arm because it "hurts me on the inside," but she has so much life energy coming from her, you can see she's not ready to go anywhere.

 

Thank you and blessed be.

[Guest Guest]

Of course I will pray for Summer...

 

What an awful thought that something so serious could affect such a little one!

 

(And of course you understand that I'll be praying in my own way for her. )

 

Thank you for allowing us to pray for Summer. Please keep us posted on her condition.

[Linda]

prayers going up for Summer from here too.

[ozzzyyy]

Praying for God's healing touch upon Summer's young life and peace for her family.

 

[HapyGirl]

{{{{{{Summer and Family}}}}}}} Positive thoughts and prayers!!

[logcabinmama]

 

 

[Judy Moist]

We are all praying for Summer and her family.Please keep us updated..

[jillg]

I talked to Beth last night, and she said Summer had had her cat scan done, and the anethesialogist said that when they put her under, that he had never seen a child with so much fight.

I made something for them and brought it over to her, and she told me whatever it was that I was doing, it was working.

In 3-5 days we will know the results of the tests they did yesterday. Apparently, it could be a very bad case of "cat scratch fever". I guess 95% of cases of that are wrongly diagnosed as lymphoma. So there's a very good hope that it's something else and she won't have to go through chemo or anything painful like that.

Beth thanked me three times and said she owed me big time for my awesome energy and gave me three hugs. So I extend the thanks to all of you who have been praying for Summer. Thank you everyone.

When I find out more, I will be sure to let you know.

Blessed be.

[Judy Moist]

My dh's aunt just went through something similar, they thought she had lymphoma, but come to find out it was scratch fever... Shes ok now, they had her on some powerful antibiotics for a couple of weeks......

 

Hopefully you will get good news soon!!!!!Still

[frugalmel]

for the child

karen

[Guest Guest]

Cat-Scratch Disease

I would like to know what exactly is "cat-scratch fever". I would also like to know how serious it is. Why do children get it? Do all cats have the potential to give it to them? Is it the same as germs in a paper cut?

Cheryl Michalec

Teacher

Yadkinville, North Carolina

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The uncovering of the cause of cat-scratch fever (now called cat-scratch disease) has been one of the great mystery stories of modern medicine. The hallmarks of cat-scratch disease are enlarged, tender lymph nodes (especially in the armpit) found under toughened, warm, red skin. For centuries children have often had these symptoms with no known cause. For centuries children have played with cats and been scratched, but no connection was made.

 

In 1946, a Dr. Hanger in New York, the owner of a "ferocious tiger," got what appeared to be an infected hangnail and then a swollen, tender lymph node full of pus under his collarbone. His friend, Dr. Rose, drained the pus from the lymph node -- but to their surprise, the pus was found to be sterile (containing no germs). They re-injected Dr. Hanger with some of this material, under the skin of his arm, and he had a strong skin reaction (sort of like a TB skin test, but this was a tiger-claw skin test).

 

Then, across the Atlantic in 1950 Paris, a 6-year-old French boy was observed to have a swollen, tender lymph node near the site of a scratch from a house cat. His physician, Dr. Debre, obtained some of the Hanger/Rose material (which he actually got from the University of Cincinnati where microbiologists were now trying to figure out this stuff). He injected some of the material under the Parisian boy's skin, and the boy developed a positive skin-test reaction!

 

This was the first documented case of what they called "La maladie des griffes de chat." Over the next several years the international collaboration continued, and cat-scratch fever was defined as a specific disease. A positive skin test in someone with swollen lymph nodes, who had been exposed to a cat, was considered to make the diagnosis.

 

When I entered medical school, cat-scratch disease was still a mystery. We knew that it happened after cat scratches, and it seemed that it must be caused by some type of bacteria, but no bacteria had ever been found in those swollen lymph nodes. Then, while I was in my second year of medical school, very tiny proteobacteria were seen in early cat-scratch lymph nodes that had been stained with silver. An organism had been found!

 

But what was it? Many possible identities were proposed and then disproved. When I was a pediatric intern, someone was finally able to grow the bacteria. The definitive pediatric infectious disease textbook (Feigin and Cherry -- a wonderful book) announced in the 1992 edition, "The bacterium that causes cat-scratch disease has been conclusively identified over the past decade...Afipia felis."

 

I received my copy of the next edition of Feigin and Cherry in today's mail. It says, "further study has now discredited Afipia felis" as the cause of cat-scratch disease! Even as the previous edition was going to press, new DNA diagnostic techniques applied to cat-scratch disease in AIDS patients were providing a wealth of new information. Another bacterium -- Bartonella -- is now known to be the cause. "That Bartonella is the cause of cat-scratch disease now has been established beyond doubt."

 

Times change.

 

Most cat-scratch disease begins with a scratch from the claw or tooth of a kitten younger than six months of age. It can also be caught from an adult cat. In California, about 40% of the cats carry Bartonella. The disease seems to rarely occur following a dog scratch or even from porcupine quills or cactus spines. This is different, though, from an infected paper cut. Most cases of cat-scratch disease occur in children between the ages of 2 and 14, and in veterinarians (those most likely to be scratched by a cat). For reasons yet to be determined, most cases occur in the fall or winter months.

 

Sometime between 3 and 30 days following the scratch (usually 7 to 12 days), the child breaks out with one or more pimples at the site of the scratch. These last for 1 to 4 weeks, until nearby lymph nodes begin to swell and become tender. Sometimes these will drain pus. Only about a third of kids will feel sick, with a fever, fatigue, decreased appetite, or headache. This is not a serious disease.

 

Most of the time, the swollen lymph nodes last from 4 to 6 weeks, and then the child recovers fully. Occasionally, the swollen nodes can last for a year. Only rarely have complications been reported, mostly in immunocompromised individuals. Treatment is usually unnecessary, since people recover well on their own, but several antibiotics (such as Zithromax and Biaxin) have been shown to shorten the course of the illness.

 

Diagnosis is now made by a blood test (or by biopsy, if other more serious conditions are suspected). The skin test is no longer performed, since it is less accurate and has now been shown to pass other known (and perhaps unknown?) diseases.

 

The unfolding story of cat-scratch disease is a tale of mystery followed by mistaken certainty, followed again by mystery and then certainty. This twisting tale helps us to put medical knowledge in perspective. Our understanding of disease is truly amazing and is growing rapidly, BUT there is much that we do not know, and much that we now consider certain will one day prove to be in error. Acting based on the best of our knowledge will usually produce good results, but let's also act in humility before all that we don't understand!

 

By the way, a new cat-scratch mystery has popped up. We know that Bartonella bacteria are present in the blood of cats and in the lymph nodes of infected humans. We also know that if infected kittens are housed with non-infected kittens, the Bartonella is not passed -- unless fleas are present. Fleas pass Bartonella from one cat to another. We don't believe that fleas pass Bartonella to humans, though, since the pimples occur in healing scratches, not in flea bites. (And almost all the people with the disease have been scratched by a cat, while only a few seem to have had flea bites at all).

 

Surprisingly, though, multiple recent attempts to find even traces of the bacteria on the nail clippings of infected kittens have proven completely unsuccessful.

 

 

[jillg]

Good news. Beth called me today to tell me that Summer has earned herself some "cat medicine". She does indeed have cat scratch fever.