Growing up, all of the kids with summer birthdays always had the best parties. Whether the kids are hanging by the pool, feasting on a nice spread of food at the park, or taking a dip at the beach, it is always a treat to celebrate outside. Which was the thinking of one Florida mom but unfortunately, her 3-year-old's birthday party ended in disaster after the little girl contracted impetigo and cellulitis, likely from the ocean. Anais Monteagudo did some investigating into the cause of her daughter's skin condition, and the answers she found were absolutely disturbing.
To celebrate Aaliyah Casola's third birthday, her mom threw her a beach bash in late July.
After a day of celebrating at Crandon Park Beach in Key Biscayne near Miami, Florida, Anais noticed that her daughter had some "redness" under her lip. The little girl had only been playing for around two hours before breaking out in the blistering rash.
Anais saw that her daughter's redness was getting "considerably worse" and decided that they needed to head to the hospital.
Instead of getting better, the redness was spreading to other parts of Aaliya's body, including her hands, stomach, and arms. "The redness turned into blisters, and they kept growing on her body," Anais told the Miami Herald.
When Anais took Aaliyah to the hospital, doctors told her that she wasn't alone in finding the mysterious markings after a dip in the ocean. She said that the doctor told her that "many people have come in from Key Biscayne with the same issues.”
Which meant there could be something, terribly, terribly, wrong with the water that her daughter had been playing in.
Doctors diagnosed Aaliyah with impetigo and cellulitis, two bacterial infections -- potentially from high levels of feces in the water.
Knowing that the beach had been the common factor in several bacterial skin infection cases at the hospital, Anais started digging into what could cause multiple people to get bacterial infections from swimming.
She found that earlier in the month, the Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County had announced a swimming advisory where her daughter's party was. This was because water samples failed to meet the "recreational water quality standard for enterococci" and they recommended that people not swim there.
In a study published by the National Center for Biotechnological Information, authors Alexandria Boehm and Lauren Sassoubre noted that "due to their ubiquity in human feces and persistence in the environment, enterococci have been adopted as indicators of human fecal pollution in water." Meaning that most likely the waters were too heavily polluted with this unsavory strain of bacteria.
Which must have been the same conclusion that Anais came to. "I did my research," she wrote. "They had tested the beach seven days before saying the levels of feces in the water was 'satisfactory' and opened for the public."
Although the advisory had been lifted in the days before the party, Anais now believes that the water still had high levels of feces and parents should've been made aware of the risk.
"This is insane!" Anais wrote. "My daughter got two different bacteria infections just by being in the beach for not even two hours."
As the Mayo Clinic explains, impetigo is a highly contagious bacterial infection of the skin that mainly affects children and infants. "Classic signs and symptoms of impetigo involve red sores that quickly rupture, ooze for a few days and then form a yellowish-brown crust." And the infection spreads through contact with another person who has the condition. Being in a crowded space, warm, humid weather, and age are all risk factors which indicate that you could be more susceptible to contracting the infection.
Cellulitis is a complication of impetigo, where infection may spread to "the tissues underlying your skin and eventually may spread to your lymph nodes and bloodstream," Mayo Clinic notes. "Untreated cellulitis can quickly become life-threatening." Fortunately, the infection can be treated with antibiotics.
Anais is now speaking out to help protect other children.
In her post, the mom explained that, "[beach officials] never had any signs up warning of the potential of this." She said that the real tragedy is that her daughter was in pain and will most likely be "getting scars all over her little hands and her chin because of this."
She also explained that she chose to share her daughter's story as a warning to other parents who want to plan a day at the beach, but need to be aware of the risks of using these public spaces. And the mom made one final vow in her heartbreaking Facebook post, "I will make sure this doesn’t happen to more people."
CafeMom has reached out to the Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County, but as of yet have not received any comments.
