Boston toddler on road to recovery after contracting Meningococcal disease

BOSTON (WHDH) - A young boy is resting and recovering after he was released from Boston Children’s Hospital where he was receiving treatment for the Meningococcal disease that prompted a citywide health alert last month.

Twenty-one-month-old Lucas Cook is on his way to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown but he still may face a host of life-long consequences. For now, he is happily fist-bumping with his grateful mother Kimberly Cook and continuing down his road to recovery.

“It did not look good,” Cook said. “When he first came in they actually told us that we could lose him.”

Lucas’s doctors are unsure if the disease will cause issues for him down the road. Cook says they are doing everything they can to prevent that from happening.

“We are going to be following up with neurology, also with the kidney doctor just to make sure, you know, that there are no long term repercussions from this illness,” she said.

Lucas spent nearly a month at Children’s Hospital battling the disease which caused his brain and spinal cord to swell and a rash to form all over his body.

He was one of the two young children who contracted the disease last month.

Both cases have been associated with Horizons for Homeless Children daycare centers, but it is unclear if the two cases are connected.

“We don’t know how each child got it because there really is no interaction between the two centers,” Cook said.

Doctors credit Cook for acting quickly to get her son the medical attention he needed.

“My biggest fear was that I didn’t get him there on time and the fact that they had to put him into a coma, it scared me even more,” Cook said. “I thought that I hadn’t reacted on time.”

Thankfully, she did and because of that, Lucas may be out of rehab in as little as two weeks.

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