Jessica Esquivel Is Home, Doing Well

Jessica Lynn Esquivel--the 6-year-old Imperial Beach girl whose arms and legs were amputated after a routine case of chicken pox led to a secondary infection and then to toxic shock syndrome--has gone home, officials at Children’s Hospital said Tuesday.

“She’s an outgoing, bright little girl, and that’s probably why she’s doing as well as she is,” said Sharon Ross, a spokeswoman for the hospital.

The girl, a kindergartner at Oneonta Elementary School, will receive “home-care visits” by a Children’s Hospital nurse four times the first week and three times the second week, Ross said. Further care will be determined at the end of two weeks, based on her condition.

Jessica entered the emergency room of adjacent Sharp Memorial Hospital on April 1 with what doctors first believed was a routine case of chicken pox. Within hours of being admitted, however, she had undergone what doctors called full cardiac arrest and complete respiratory, kidney and liver failure.

On April 18, doctors said, they amputated her arms at the elbow and her legs at the knee in an effort to save her life. She remained in critical condition in pediatric intensive care until just recently, when she appeared to make a rapid turnaround.

Doctors say she suffered no brain damage from the toxic shock that resulted after a virulent strain of streptococcus bacteria entered her body through one of the lesions caused by the chickenpox. They now expect her to have full liver, kidney and respiratory recovery.

Last week, doctors began fitting the girl with an artificial arm. Ross said she wears a prosthetic device on her right arm, which Jessica calls “my helper.” Doctors say she is able to pick up toys, hand items to her parents and change the channels on the television with a remote control.

“She’ll be fitted this week for lower-limb prostheses, and in the next couple of weeks she’ll work on learning how to stand,” Ross said.

Jessica continues to receive intravenous antibiotic therapy to help fight the infections that developed after her illness, Ross said, adding that the girl is able to go home as part of a home-care service instituted by the hospital March 19. She will continue to visit the hospital daily for rehabilitation, Ross said.

Children’s defines its HomeCare program as “a collaborative nursing and pharmacologic program that allows stable patients to receive specific, ongoing treatment in the best healing environment for any child: their own home.”

Without the program, Ross said, the girl would probably remain in the hospital another two to three weeks.

Jessica’s father, Felix, 27, an auto mechanic, and her mother, Lisa, 25, have not been critical of any aspect of her treatment at Children’s, but the family has hired an attorney, medical malpractice lawyer David D. Miller.

Miller said he and the family are contemplating legal action. The Esquivels have been critical of Scripps Memorial Hospital in Chula Vista and of a private pediatrician in Imperial Beach.

The mother said she and the girl were sent home from the Scripps emergency room and from the pediatrician’s clinic without the near-fatal infection being detected until the girl was admitted to Sharp and Children’s.