Placentia : Young Victim of Spine Disorder Dies

Last December, Lisa Ramirez was sitting on the sofa with her 7-year-old son, Jeffrey Jr., and remarking about how nice a Christmas it was turning out to be.

Jeffrey had been released earlier than expected from UCI Medical Center, where he was being treated for a spinal condition that had left him paralyzed below the waist since birth. He was home for Christmas.

Once home, Jeffrey had received Christmas toys from the Placentia Lend-a-Hand organization. “With all of this and trying to get things together, we thought it was a really nice thing for them to do,” Lisa Ramirez said.

It turned out to be Jeffrey’s last Christmas. He died Thursday morning after paramedics rushed him to the medical center.

His grandmother, Rose Orosco of Yorba Linda, said the boy had become listless earlier in the week and on Wednesday had been taken to the medical center for a checkup.

Later that day, he collapsed and stopped breathing and was admitted to the hospital, where he died the following morning.

Dr. Eldon L. Foltz, the UCI neurosurgeon who treated Jeffrey, said that the boy’s condition, spina bifida, is always accompanied by hydrocephalus, or water on the brain.

To drain fluid away from the brain, a tube is run from the brain cavity to some other body cavity, and “this frequently gives them problems with overwhelming sepsis infection of the lungs,” Dr. Foltz said.

He said that is probably what caused Jeffrey’s death, although it also could have been a brain hemorrhage. An autopsy probably will be conducted to be certain, he added.

Orosco said Jeffrey’s parents “are bearing up, but this was their only child.”