Against the Odds : 6-Year-old Jessica Struggles With Artificial Limbs to Be ‘Normal’

Occasionally, when she’s sitting home in the afternoons, Jessica Lynn Esquivel sees a commercial flash across the television screen. This particular 30-second spot leaves her frustrated, annoyed, confused, and, she said, a little bit angry.

In it, a man tries to “limbo” beneath a horizontal pole. His torso parallel to the ground, he extends himself lower and lower until, finally, exasperated and breathless, he walks away.

Jessica says it’s the quitting, the sheer giving up, that makes her angry at the man “who could have done it, if only he’d tried.”

The last five months have been hard for Jessica Lynn Esquivel. The last five months have been all about not quitting, not giving up-- trying .

On April 1, the 6-year-old Imperial Beach girl entered Sharp Memorial Hospital with what doctors first believed was a routine case of chickenpox. Within hours, her fever had raced to 104 degrees. Her ankles were severely bloated. The circulation in her arms and legs was gone.

Entering through a pox-caused lesion, a rare strain of streptococcus bacteria--the same virulent strain that killed “Muppet Man” Jim Henson, doctors say--triggered a secondary infection, then brought about toxic shock.

Doctors at Children’s Hospital, where she was later admitted, say the strain of Type A “strep” that infected Jessica had never been seen in a child anywhere in the United States.

They say she barely survived, making her subsequent recovery all the more remarkable.

On April 18, surgeons severed her arms at the elbow and her legs at the knee because the circulation in her extremities was non-existent. Her life since then has been spent learning to live as an amputee.

Jessica came home June 19. On Monday afternoon, she was sitting on the couch, watching TV with her 4-year-old brother, Felix. She has learned a lot since leaving the hospital, not the least of which is dressing herself in the morning, standing, walking, drawing, writing her name perfectly . . . doing some things “normal” 6-year-olds can’t do.

“I can walk on my legs real good,” she said, then began to prove it. “I’ve been to two friends’ birthday parties, and just the other day, I went horseback riding with my mom and my dad and my little brother.”

In therapy at Children’s, Jessica has learned to play games, including several on a computer. Doctors say her introduction to prosthetics could not have gone better.

“She is doing just fine,” said Mark Morelli, a spokesman for the hospital. “She now has all four prostheses in place and is continuing on an outpatient basis. We see her in physical and occupational therapy three times a week, two hours each time.

“As recently as last week, she took steps for the first time. She’s gaining strength and dexterity with all four limbs, and both arm prostheses seem quite comfortable and natural to her now. She’s showing all of the positive steps that we’d like to see at the present time.”

“We’re all so proud of her,” said Lisa Esquivel, Jessica’s mother. “It takes time to get used to this . . . “

She sighed and began again.

“But really, she’s done remarkably well. It’s been easier than what I expected, really it has. I feel like--at least, I hope--the worst is behind us. Jessica has always been very independent, and, if anything, she’s frustrated by not getting to be more independent. That’s actually been the hard part.”

Even so, she swims in a wading pool, bathes herself, and, her mother said, has begun to dance again. Before the illness, dance was her favorite activity. Her idol, then as now, is dancer-singer Paula Abdul. One of her favorite treats since her surgery: getting to eat in the school cafeteria.

Jessica’s favorite game is Ker Plunk, the winner being the one who gets the most marbles in a plastic frog’s mouth. She usually wins, she says.

Lisa Esquivel, 25, said her daughter starts school Sept. 10, enrolling as a first-grader at Oneonta Elementary in Imperial Beach, where she graduated with her kindergarten class after leaving the hospital. Her mother said that Jessica will attend for full days, with no restrictions, although she’s hoping to get a job at the school.

“Her recovery has been terrific, but so many people have shown her so much attention that, really, it’s made her just a little bit shy,” Lisa Esquivel said. “She’s become a little bit like a celebrity. Just recently, she started to seem more like her old self--emotionally. Sometimes, she’ll say, ‘I can’t,’ and then I’ll look at her, and she’ll say, ‘I can.’ ”

Monday afternoon, Jessica read aloud the saga of “Sticky Stanley,” about a boy who eats so much candy that his fingers stick together. She drew a detailed portrait of her mother, picking up the crayons with artificial fingers of steel and plastic, flesh-colored to resemble real fingers. One by one, she put each crayon back in its holder.

Using a pink crayon, she first drew a heart, describing that as her mother’s face.

Her most difficult task--walking--is something her mother says she’s willing, even eager, to try more each day.

“We go to a shopping center, and she insists on walking,” Lisa Esquivel said. “If anything, she’s really been pushing herself. She’s very strong-willed. If she says she’ll do something, she’ll keep pushing until she can. She’s talking about wanting to water-ski now. It’s amazing.”

Jessica clearly took pride in her ability to perform normal tasks.

“Sometimes, I like to take my socks and shoes off,” she said. When asked why, she smiled and said, “When my feet are sweating.”

But she also has more lofty plans.

“One day, she wants to be a fashion designer, then a computer programmer, then a nun!” her mother said. “Now, she wants to be a teacher, I think because she likes her teachers (at Children’s) so much.”

Lisa Esquivel and husband, Felix, have hired an attorney, medical malpractice specialist David D. Miller. They haven’t filed a lawsuit but might do so, Miller has said, because of treatment administered to Jessica before she was admitted to Sharp.

Lisa Esquivel said she and her daughter were sent home twice from Scripps Memorial Hospital in Chula Vista, where Jessica was taken on the night of March 30 and a few hours later on the 31st. She said doctors diagnosed Jessica’s fever and delusions as symptomatic of a “simple case of chickenpox” but failed to listen to her heart or take her blood pressure.

Lisa Esquivel said she spoke with an emergency-room doctor, who told her “I worried too much.”

“Yeah, he told my wife that she worried too much,” Felix Esquivel, a 27-year-old auto mechanic, said at the time. “But now my daughter doesn’t have hands or feet . . . and it’s hard.”

Officials at Scripps have declined comment.

Lisa Esquivel said she and Jessica received “similar treatment” at a pediatric clinic in Imperial Beach. Lisa and Felix Esquivel have been quoted as saying they have no problem with treatment received at either Sharp or Children’s.

“I’m encouraged,” Lisa Esquivel said Monday. “But, sometimes, when I lie down at night, it hits me, and I’m very, very sad. I’d give anything if it hadn’t happened. But it did, and we’ve got to make the best of it. All of us.

“A couple of times, we ran into people, who looked at Jess and said, ‘You poor thing.’ But if they could see her and how well she’s done, I don’t think they’d say that. She is a human being. I actually heard, indirectly, from a couple of people at the hospital that they thought it might have been better if Jessica had died.

“Well, I don’t agree at all. I’m just so grateful, so thankful, that she’s alive. You can’t believe how happy we are about that.”