Big scare: Small cut to hand leads to brain surgery requiring

Camping outdoors and getting scratches and cuts is almost a rite of passage for children worldwide.

Jasmine-Rose Kinsey.

CAMPING outdoors and getting scratches and cuts is almost a rite of passage for children worldwide.

Yet for nine-year-old Jasmine-Rose Kinsey, a small cut turned into something much bigger when she found herself requiring brain surgery to remove fluid.

Jasmine-Rose’s mother Elle-Maree Edmond said her daughter cut her hand while camping with her dad but hadn’t sought medical attention.

Something that’s a normal routine for many but one that Elle-Maree said parents need to watch more closely to avoid the same nightmare.

“Jasmine-Rose had headaches and stomach pains after she got back and so we went to GPs, as anyone would, but then one morning she woke up screaming with a swollen eye,” she said.

“I immediately took her to the GP again but she spewed up two lots of antibiotics so we went straight to the emergency department because mother’s intuition told me something wasn’t right.

“She was sensitive to noise and light and even the sound of my car indicator drove her mad so I knew that, for a girl with a high pain tolerance, this was bad.”

In the Children’s Ward of the Townsville University Hospital, CAT scans and MRIs showed Jasmine didn’t just have fluid behind her eye, she had fluid between the covering and surface of her brain as well as a staph infection in her blood.

“On Wednesday Jasmine-Rose was put under and they drilled into her head to drain the fluid, which, as a mother, was the most horrible moment you could imagine,” Elle-Maree said.

“Just knowing that this one of the most vital organs that they were operating on, and she’s your baby girl; it’s awful.

“I was also missing my son on top of that so it was just a really heartbreaking time.”

Three days after the fluid was removed, Jasmine-Rose had a long tube – known as a PICC line – inserted into her arm, with the tip positioned in a large vein near the heart.

“It was hard to see her recover from surgery only to go back under for the PICC line, but it’s worth it because she’s on the road to recovery now,” Elle-Maree said.

“She’s back to her normal, sassy self but it’s heartbreaking because she’s housebound so she doesn’t knock her PICC line out.”

Elle-Maree said they were hoping to have the PICC line out by Christmas so her daughter could spend time with family by the pool.

She thanked the doctors who helped her daughter and said parents should take care these Christmas holidays. “If your kid has a cut please get it seen to by a doctor because I don’t want anyone else to live through this,” she said.

Originally published as Big scare: Small cut to hand leads to brain surgery requiring