"Zyrin Foots, a 10-year-old boy from Texas, developed Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS-C) after contracting COVID-19. A rare condition, MIS-C causes inflammation in children's organs, including the heart, and the inability of Foots' heart to pump blood caused him to develop gangrene in his legs.

Foots was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 30, and his body progressively shut down as medical staff tried desperately to get him healthy again, his aunt, Ashley Engmann, said.

Engmann told ABC13 on Wednesday that doctors had given her nephew's mother two options. "They gave my sister a choice: to amputate his legs and arms or let him go," Engmann said at the time. "Without the amputation, he doesn't have any chance to live. With it, he has a 25% chance."


https://abc7chicago.com/child-covid-death-texas-zyrin-foots-covid-19/11127185/

Of course she would let him go. It was the humane thing to do

Horrific and absolutely heartbreaking.

I wish I hadn't read that.

The poor little boy.

covid strikes again ~

I believe I would have made the same decision. But it must have been a heartbreaking decision to make.

I mentioned before that I was lurking on a nurses' forum, and limb amputation was one of the possible Covid consequences that they mentioned. The stories that they told about their service in ICUs would make any sane person run to get the vaccine. Most of us really have no idea, no idea at all. It is a disease with potentially horrific consequences. One nurse mentioned that the survival statistics for Covid are misleading because [paraphrased,] "You *could* survive, but you might not *want* to." What happened to this poor child is a good example of that.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2021 07:33PM by summer.

I feel the same way.

Sometimes it is hard to weigh making someone suffer vs. wanting desperately for them to live.

That's what I hope would be decided for me in the same situation.

I agree.

But for the person making the decision particularly for a child, there is no adequate option. If you let the child go, you wonder forever what sort of life she might have had. If you keep the child and she lives, you spend the rest of your life wondering if you made the right decision.

The mother described in the OP will probably spend much of the rest of her life, specifically late at night, in hell.

But did the mother make sure she and the rest of her family got their Covid vaccinations? I doubt it.

She will do just fine, lying to herself, as she moves on.

What a heartless, mean-spirited, nasty comment. Shame on you.

You have no way of knowing what the mother's thoughts on vaccination are or from where that boy got the virus. And even if she is an "anti-vaxxer", which I have seen no indication that she is, she's still suffered a tremendous loss.

According to the additional information in the story, that boy's mother was also in an accident 8 years ago, when she was six months pregnant with her third son. She was hit by a truck and in a coma for months and is now disabled. She has one son left. Can you imagine the trauma that child is going to have to live with after this? And the mom, I'm sure, will not "do just fine", after losing two of her sons.

COVID-19 has really stripped the basic decency and humanity from a lot of people. It's very distressing to see.

Amen and amen.

Judgementalism is rampant.

Is COVID exposing people's greatest weaknesses? Nastiness abounds.

You show who you really are in extremis.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/2021 12:59PM by Nightingale.

There is no evidence that I've seen that the parents were unvaccinated. At age ten, the child died before the ages 5-11 dose became available. The parents thought he picked it up at school, which is entirely possible. IMO the "Covid dashboards" maintained by school systems are seldom accurate. And a Texas school system may not have a mask mandate. I teach school, and I can tell you that a mask mandate makes a huge difference, particularly in middle school.

ETA: Plus, I think that this was a case of everything that could possibly go wrong, did.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/2021 05:29PM by summer.

This one hits home hard. It also shows people the difference between the societies and cultures we evolved from and our current eras of choice in these matters.

We like to extend life even to the point where it might not be worth living. And yet this boy had no choice. The old person being cared for to live as long as possible with no more mental facilities than this boy lives and this boy dies.

My best friend when I was 12 had Leukemia. They cut his legs off in a desperate attempt to save his life. In the end he got to decide - at 13 that he didn't want the hell of more treatments. So his parents let him go.

In human existences where some functioning in legs and arms and hands and feet are required to participate in this thing we call life letting the boy die is not a choice parents can make. But today we have options.

All I can say is if it were my kid I would have wanted them to make the choice and if they couldn't I would know letting them go was the best option.

It would make a great superhero backstory. Left to die and taken to a secret location and made super. Kids would love that.