Young COVID-19 patient whose story went viral released from hospital
By Andrea Eger
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TULSA, Oklahoma (Tulsa World) — One of the youngest critical COVID-19 patients treated at The Children’s Hospital at Saint Francis was released Monday, just a few days after her mother’s plea to vaccination holdouts went viral.
After a 12-day hospital stay, 3-year-old Aurora Cannon returned home to Fort Gibson, escorted by local fire trucks.
“Auroras medical team is amazed at how quickly she turned around. No oxygen last night. Running in circles today with no drops in oxygen saturations. Eating. Drinking. Playing. Laughing. Now, celebrating!!” wrote her mother, Amelia Cannon, on Facebook. “I am so happy that this chapter of our lives is coming to a close. We will never be the same.”
The Cannons’ story went worldwide via social media posts and news stories after Amelia Cannon, a registered nurse in the emergency room at Saint Francis Hospital, took to the internet last week.
She believes she gave Aurora the virus after contracting it from one of the many unvaccinated patients she had treated recently at work.
On Aug. 12, she posted: “If you choose not to be vaccinated, you’ve made a choice for my daughter, too. Your choice led to my innocent child being hospitalized. So forgive me, but I am angry. I am angry that I have done EVERYTHING right. Angry that I come to work and exhaust myself to treat unvaccinated patients. Only to bring it home to my babies. Can you imagine my frustration? My guilt? My fear?”
While Cannon and her husband and their 1-year-old daughter recovered quickly from their bouts with COVID-19, Aurora was not as fortunate.
She ended up with pneumonia and, after sudden respiratory distress after days in the hospital, was transferred to the Pediatric ICU and placed on BiPap, or Bilevel positive airway pressure.
It’s a form of noninvasive ventilation therapy used to facilitate breathing.
After successful treatment and rapid improvement over the weekend, Aurora was discharged and sent home on Monday, a hospital spokeswoman confirmed.
Cannon posted public videos of Aurora’s car ride home and her reunion with her little sister to Facebook.
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