“She couldn’t walk or talk after getting chickenpox”... What happened to a 7-year-old girl’s brain?

[Financial News] When her seven-year-old daughter got chickenpox, her mother was not particularly worried.
She thought of it as a rite of passage children commonly go through. Once the blisters subsided and scabs formed, she expected her daughter to be healthy again and running around. But around the time the chickenpox scabs began to form, the family’s ordinary life was shattered.
On the 20th (local time), the British daily The Sun reported the heartbreaking story of Ruby Hopper, 10, who suffered serious aftereffects from a rare brain disease following a chickenpox infection.
The tragedy began around Easter in 2022. Ruby, who was seven at the time, caught chickenpox alongside her younger sibling. But just as scabs began to form and they thought she was recovering, Ruby’s temperature soared to 40°C. She could not even open her eyes or speak. Her arms and legs stiffened, and she could barely let out a groan.

Her alarmed parents rushed her by ambulance to Leeds General Infirmary in the UK. But the medical staff’s assessment was dismissive. They sent her home, calling it “just the flu” after chickenpox. Two days later, they returned to the hospital when she had become unable even to control her urination, but the response was still only that “it could be the flu.”
A week later, her stiffened body began to loosen little by little, and she started speaking, but she still could not walk. The decisive warning sign appeared in her eyes: Ruby’s right eye had turned outward. Her horrified mother took her to an optician, and it was only after hearing the assessment that “a brain tumor is suspected” that she received a thorough examination at a university hospital.
The tests showed that it was not a brain tumor. But an even more terrible illness was attacking the girl’s brain. The diagnosis was acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), a rare inflammatory disease in which the immune system malfunctions shortly after an infection and indiscriminately attacks the healthy central nervous system, including the brain and spinal cord. In Ruby’s case, it was confirmed that the chickenpox virus she had previously contracted had triggered this deadly reaction.
As her immune system gnawed away at the fatty sheath (myelin) that helps transmit nerve signals, Ruby suffered serious damage, including muscle weakness, difficulty walking and vision loss. Because the diagnosis came too late, her brain’s nerves had already been irreversibly damaged.

Ruby ultimately lost her sight permanently after damage to her right optic nerve. To help her daughter, whose legs had weakened due to spinal cord damage, her mother had to sit on the floor and teach her to walk again, starting with her first steps. To make matters worse, the effects of the brain damage also brought on precocious puberty when she was around eight. Now ten, Ruby still has a school attendance rate of just 70% because of frequent hospitalizations and illnesses such as shingles.
The hospital run by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) met with the parents belatedly and formally apologized for its inadequate initial response and misdiagnosis. Ruby’s case is now used to train medical students to recognize ADEM symptoms early.
Chickenpox is a common infectious disease, but in extremely rare cases it can cause life-threatening neurological complications such as encephalitis. Specialists warn, “If a child with chickenpox becomes severely lethargic, suddenly cannot walk, or develops vision problems, don’t dismiss it as simple fatigue or a cold—seek a thorough neurological examination immediately.”
A small spark that began with chickenpox took away a child’s sight and everyday life. It is a painful reminder that we must never take lightly any “warning signs” that are out of the ordinary for our children.
[email protected] Jeon Sang-il Reporter