(WHDH) — A North Carolina mother is warning other parents after her son contracted a severe airborne virus from a mosquito bite last week.
LoriAnne Jenkins Surrett and her family were out shopping when her 6-year-old son, Noah, complained of a headache on Aug. 4. The next day, while her five sons were staying in their grandparent’s house, LoriAnne was told that Noah was sick and needed to be rushed to the hospital.
“Noah’s lips were blue, eyes fixed looking up and was completely limp he had a seizure,” Surrett wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday after seeing her son in the hospital.
Despite using insect repellant, Noah contracted La Crosse encephalitis, which is a disease carried by mosquitoes that attacks the nervous system. It caused Noah to suffer several seizures.
Noah remains in the ICU but on Thursday, Surrett shared an update on his progress in a post that said “he finally woke up and was responding to me, he talked about snakes, the fire he saw on the tv, and how he wanted to go home.”
Surrett’s initial post has been shared more than 3,000 times.
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