An Ohio father is speaking out after his 4-year-old daughter developed severe complications from the flu, including a severe brain injury.
“I just want people to take the flu more seriously,” Bradley Boler, a security guard and father of four in Chillicothe, Ohio, told “Good Morning America.”
“I’m just an average guy working your 9 to 5, trying to take care of my kids and my family. I always thought that the flu was just, take some medicine, rest and you’re OK … and it struck down Locklynn.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the flu, or influenza, is a “contagious respiratory illness caused by influenza viruses” that can be mild to severe and is spread through “tiny droplets made when people with flu cough, sneeze, or talk.”
Flu symptoms vary, and some people might not show any signs of the flu. Symptoms can include a fever, chills, a cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle or body aches, headaches, fatigue, vomiting and diarrhea, the latter two of which can be more common in children.
Kids younger than 5, in particular, are at a higher risk of developing serious complications from the flu and can have the flu for a longer period of time than others.
Boler, 31, told “GMA” three of his four children, his daughters, all tested positive for influenza A at the end of February. Two of his girls have since recovered, but unlike her siblings, Locklynn’s condition grew worse and she contracted pneumonia as well and collapsed at home on Feb. 24 before she was rushed to an emergency room.
“She jumps up out of the bed and runs to the bathroom. And then she collapsed right before she got to the bathroom door and it looked like she was having like, a seizure,” Boler recalled, adding, “I picked her up, and then I realized that she wasn’t breathing.”
Boler said his fiancee and his sister did CPR and compressions on Locklynn as he drove all of them to a local hospital near their home in Chillicothe, but Locklynn was without oxygen for at least four minutes before she was successfully resuscitated.
In a matter of hours, Boler said his daughter went from being a “feisty” boss and “daddy’s girl” to someone nearly unrecognizable.
“It don’t feel real,” he said. “It’s pretty crazy. It’s like, I wake up to the nightmare.”
Locklynn was transferred by air ambulance on Feb. 24 to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where Dr. Marlina Lovett, an attending physician in the pediatric intensive care unit at Nationwide Children’s, has been on her care team.
Lovett said Locklynn came into the hospital “critically ill.”
“When she arrived to our hospital, she had a breathing tube in place,” Lovett told “GMA.” “She was on the ventilator. She was essentially unresponsive and she was very critical at that point in time.”
Doctors at Nationwide Children’s diagnosed Locklynn with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, a severe brain injury marked by myoclonus or muscle spasms.
Today, Locklynn remains on a ventilator to help her breathe and doctors expect she will have to stay in the hospital for at least the next few months.
“There are concerns about her ability to control her body with movements, how awake she’ll be long-term,” Lovett said. “We don’t know how interactive she’ll be with her parents. We suspect that she’ll probably need a feeding tube all her life and she’ll probably be wheelchair bound and unable to walk. But some of the other stuff, we just need more time to see what Locklynn’s recovery can be.”
Despite the devastating diagnosis, Boler said he and his family remain hopeful.
“She’ll more likely never walk again. She’ll never talk. She has no awareness. But, you know, God works in mysterious ways. You never know,” Boler said. “She’s little. She could always get better. We’re just hopeful. We got a lot of family that are helping us, family, friends and all the prayers that we’re getting.”
Both Boler and Lovett said they hope that by sharing Locklynn’s story, they can raise awareness about the flu and why the virus shouldn’t be taken lightly.
“The flu’s something we all have to take pretty seriously, because it can make kids and adults and those with additional illnesses really sick, and I think that’s what we saw with Locklynn — and unfortunately, the flu can have some very severe complications,” Lovett said.
The best way to prevent or reduce the severity of flu, according to the CDC, is to get a flu vaccine. Other ways to avoid getting sick include regular handwashing, avoiding others who are sick, and covering coughs and sneezes.
“If one person sees what I’m talking about and is like, ‘Look at their kid,’ and like, ‘Maybe we need to go to the doctor,’ and it saves that kid’s life, then I feel like I have [an] obligation to do that,” said Boler. “I don’t want this to take anybody else’s babies.”
