The family of an 11-year-old Florida boy says he died from an infection just weeks after twisting his ankle on a treadmill.
Jesse Brown’s family told Fox 35 Orlando that he was a healthy fifth-grader who rode motocross and was always on the go before he twisted his ankle on a treadmill, possibly scratching himself, a few weeks ago, which triggered a chain of events that led to him losing his life.
A few days after the ankle injury, Brown woke up with bruises that alarmed his family.
"His whole leg was covered in like splotchy, purply, red, almost like bruises," Megan Brown, Jesse’s cousin, told the outlet.
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Shortly after that, Brown was admitted to an intensive care unit where he was told by doctors he had group A strep infection, which turned into flesh-eating bacteria that caused his brain to swell and ultimately killed him.
"They said that because he rolled his ankle, that that’s likely where the infection attacked it," Megan Brown said. "Because it was already weak."
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"In my mind, I was in complete disbelief. I was like, ‘He’ll be fine. This could never happen to our family.’"
Dr. Candice Jones, an Orlando pediatrician, told the outlet that there has been an uptick in strep A cases in children but that most are not as severe as Brown's.
"Some of the speculations has been that some of those cases started after respiratory infections, and we had been seeing an uptick in those types of infections anyway post-pandemic," Jones said.
Jones says that group A strep is the same bacteria that causes strep throat and can sometimes cause secondary infections like the flesh-eating infection that Brown suffered. Jones said symptoms to look for are swelling, redness, foul smell and fever.
Brown's family says they hope the experience will help others notice warning signs in the future.
"If there was more awareness, maybe we could have caught it earlier when we noticed he had a fever," Megan Brown said.
