Help comes too late for baby Lashawn
Unfortunately, not every medical story has a happy ending. Today, we learned that a young patient featured in this newscast last week has not survived.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
One-year-old Lashawn Gladden suffered from a rare condition called Myasthenia Gravis. The neurological disorder attacks muscles in the throat, eyes and chest. However, complications occurred when the little girl developed pneumonia and last Thursday the toddler was transferred from the Universal Health Services Hospital to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital in case she needed to go on a ventilator machine.
Kanisha Plunkett, Lashawn’s Mother
“They needed it in case she got worst. Theirs nevah mi the work, so they transferred her over to K.H.M.H. so that in case she mi needed it, they could have put her on it. “
Plunkett says her daughter apparently did not need the ventilator and instead was put on a nebulizer and given her medication. Plunkett says when she visited her baby on Monday morning she knew the toddler was not healthy, but was at least showing some improvement…that is until that evening.
Kanisha Plunkett
“She looked much better. She mi the play, walk, feed ihself because they took the tube out of her nose, hold her bottle, everything, she looked much, much more brighter. How she looked yesterday morning and how she looked in the evening was two totally different things. Weak, weak, weak, she looked limber when they picked her up, like she couldn’t even hold up her body. But when we come, I think she mi the sleep and when I look I see the things the come through her mouth and her nose and my ma gone and call the nurse.”
Jacqueline Woods
“What do you think may have happened to your grand daughter?”
Idolly Woodeye, Grandmother
“Well, for the moment I can’t exactly say, but like everything just happened so sudden. Because she was improving so well for the past couple days, the amount of things she mi the do, dah like she mi the come back to normal. We know that dah wah disease which would have been a lifetime disease, but still, this death just happen so sudden, cause it’s like in a flash.”
Jacqueline Woods
“So the family’s at a loss, you guys are just basically confused, you don’t know what happened?”
Idolly Woodeye
“Yes, we are confused, we are very much confused.”
Jacqueline Woods
“What is the doctor saying?”
Idolly Woodeye
“Well they start the story all over again that the weakness of the muscles, it get so weak that she couldn’t keep up anymore and that dah the cause weh they give us, that the baby was too weak to make it.”
One-year-old Lashawn Gladden died around 6:55 on Monday evening. At the time of her death, the family was making arrangements to send the baby abroad to receive the treatment she desperately needed. Jacqueline Woods for News 5.
