TRIUMPH OF LIFE & LIMB FOR BX. KID
New arm after flesh-eating nightmare
Seven-year-old Amillian Villa just got a new bike — and a new arm so she can ride it.
The Bronx girl, known as Mimi, suffered a heartbreaking amputation of her left arm after she was stricken with flesh-eating bacteria just as she started kindergarten in late 2017.
An initial misdiagnosis nearly killed her. Emergency-room doctors failed to detect the lifethreatening infection and sent her home. It then spread rapidly, causing multi-organ failure.
Even after surgeons had to remove Mimi’s arm, they feared she could die, lose another limb or suffer brain damage.
“There was nothing I could do but get down on my knees and pray,” said her mom, Vanessa Avila. “It was a nightmare.”
Over the past 19 months, Mimi has made a miraculous recov-very. She has also remastered a variety of tasks, everything from tying her shoes to dribbling a basket-t- ball.
“Mimi can do anything a twohanded person can do. She just does it differently,” said Kelly Milano, her occupational therapist at Blythedale Children’s Hospital in Valhalla, Westchester County, where Mimi has learned to adjust to her amputation.
Mimi was fitted with a prosthetic arm last week, then got the bike, a gift from Handspring, the Middletown, Orange County, company that devised the limb.
It’s a mystery how Mimi contracted the disease.
She complained of pain in her arm while at school in November 2017, a few days after going to a hotel swimming pool for a party. She had no cuts or scrapes that could be infected, her mom said.
The next morning, she woke up with a fever and her mom took her to the emergency room at St. John’s Riverside Hospital in Yonkers, where they lived.
“They thought it was a sprain,” Avila said. As for the fever, doctors called it a cold. “They just sent me home and told me to give her Tylenol and Motrin.”
Two days later, Mimi’s arm was badly swollen, “hard as a rock” and turning purple, Avila said.
She took Mimi back to the ER. This time, doctors thought it was a blood clot, she said. They sent Mimi by ambulance to Westchester Medical Center to have it drained.
But by the time she got there, Mimi was in septic shock. Tests confirmed the presence of Group A streptococcus bacteria, the most common cause of the flesh-eating disease.
The Westchester doctors tried to save Mimi’s arm, but the infection was spreading so rapidly that they had to amputate.
Mimi was lucky to be alive but hospitalized for three months to recuperate from injuries to her kidneys, liver, respiratory system and brain.
After surgery, Mimi was so weak that she could not stand up or walk for months.
Today, Mimi loves to sing, dance, do artwork and pose for pictures.
“I want to be a model and a veterinarian,” she said.
Her sister Ashanti, 9, said, “She can make a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich by herself. She can do most things by herself. She’s very independent.”
During a visit from The Post, Mimi hopped on the bike and started riding it, her mom helping steer. She will soon get an attachment for the prosthetic to grip the handlebars, so she can ride solo.
Mimi also received a cuddly custom doll with brown hair and eyes and one arm.
A 9-year-old Wisconsin boy, Rylan Ernst, raised money at his birthday party to donate the special doll, handmade by Amy Jandrisevits of Milwaukee, who launched a nonprofit, A Doll Like Me, to craft dolls for kids with disabilities.
“I named her Precious, and she looks just like me,” Mimi said.
Mimi’s story should serve as a warning to parents, said Dr. Kathy Silverman, her pediatrician at Blythedale.
“If your child has what looks like an infection in their skin — red, swollen and tender — it needs to be seen by a professional,” she said. “It can enlarge quickly, within minutes to hours.”
In 2005, a 10-year-old Bronx girl died from the disease after doctors first thought she had a cold. She was sent to Montefiore Hospital after her hands began to swell, but it was too late.
A St. John’s spokeswoman said the hospital would look into its treatment of Mimi.