In Louisiana, 12-year-old Juliet Daly, is speaking out about her experience battling coronavirus (COVID-19); she shares that she “died for two minutes,” before beating the fatal virus after three long weeks.
Daly was a healthy and active young girl prior to contracting the virus, but due to a heart condition triggered by COVID-19, she found herself being airlifted to Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans with heart failure; which ultimately resulted in her heart stopping for 120 seconds.
Daly tells ‘Good Morning America,’ “I died for two minutes.” Before her hospitalization, she details, “My stomach would not stop hurting. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to live. I wanted for it all to stop.” Upon her arrival to the hospital, she was placed in the ICU with a ventilator. Her mother, Jennifer Daly, adds, “After they put the breathing tube down her throat, her heart stopped. They had to do two minutes of CPR on her. At that point, my whole world just crumbled.”
Ahead of her COVID-19 diagnosis, Daly listed severe abdominal pain as her only symptom, unlike the usual fever, cough or difficulty breathing seen in other patients. Because of that, she warns, “I think it’s really important to get the message out. I mean we nearly missed it. If we hadn’t taken her to the hospital on time, I don’t think things would’ve turned out okay.”
Daly’s doctor, Dr. Jake Kleinmahon, a pediatric cardiologist, says that her rare heart condition was caused by inflammation and later triggered by the novel virus, leaving her to rely on a ventilator for four days.
Kleinmahon adds, “COVID-19 can infect the heart and it can cause the cells in the heart to be unhappy and actually start to die.”
Daly’s mother confirms that she is back home, recovering, adding, “I’m so grateful the doctors were able to diagnose it so quickly and were able to get her treated. We are all going through a tough time right now, some more than others, but, like Juliet, we will recover.”
