Walking and talking, our little miracle just weeks after double stroke
ONLY weeks before Christmas, three-year-old Crystal-Marie Brown became one of Britain’s youngest stroke victims.
She was paralysed down her right side after suffering two strokes on December 4.
But she fought back so well she was home two days before Christmas – and has already learned to walk, talk and smile again.
Her 22-year-old mother Natalie, of Muirhead, Lanarkshire, said: ‘She’s our wee miracle.’
Mrs Brown found Crystal-Marie crying and with her face ‘fallen and lopsided’ in the middle of the night. She said: ‘I rushed to see why she was crying and something terrible had happened to my wee girl. When I tried to give her a drink of water it ran down the side of her little face because the whole of her right side was completely paralysed. We knew we had to get her to hospital as quickly as possible.’
She said the only warning sign had been a slight limp Crystal-Marie had developed two days earlier. Mrs Brown and her mechanic husband Michael, 22, took their daughter to hospital but were reassured she only had an ‘irritable hip’.
Two days later, Crystal-Marie was taken to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow, where a scan revealed she had suffered a central nervous system vasculitis episode, or stroke, not once but twice.
Mrs Brown said: ‘We were told only one or two children in a million get this but it didn’t make it any easier to accept. I had never heard of children suffering strokes, only adults. We were upset and shocked to the core.’
Crystal-Marie’s parents could only pray she would recover.
Mrs Brown said: ‘In just 36 hours she gave me the loveliest grin and I knew everything would be OK. She is walking now, just weeks later.
‘She’s doing really well. It’s amazing, especially when you think how long adults take to recover from strokes. Little ones are so resilient.’
Mrs Brown is now calling on doctors to be vigilant for strokes in children, saying: ‘We just want doctors to consider them in kids, even if they are rare.’