Elmwood Park resident Kim Aiello said she has a lot to be thankful for in 2018. She explained that her daughter, Olivia, a seventh-grader at Elm Middle School, nearly died on Dec. 23, due to bacterial sinusitis that made its way into her brain.
She said the fast reactions from the medical staff at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood enabled Olivia to have emergency brain surgery that saved her life.
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“I feel completely blessed,” Kim Aiello said. “We’ve witnessed a miracle.”
The family had a bake sale to raise money for Olivia’s therapy and medical bills on Feb. 13 at the Elmwood Park Rec Center. Kim Aiello said more than $3,000 was raised.
Dr. Andrew Bonwit, the pediatric infectious disease medical director at Loyola, said Olivia’s bacterial sinusitis made its way across the thin layers of bone into the space around her brain within her skull. Leading up to the Dec. 23 surgery, Kim Aiello said her daughter had a bad cold the week before Christmas.
“I thought she just had a cold,” she said. “By Thursday [of that week], she was really tired and threw up. So, we figured she had the stomach flu.”
By Dec. 23, she said the Aiello family knew something was seriously wrong.
“I came home from Christmas shopping and tried to wake her up,” Kim Aiello said. “She was not speaking to me and grunting.”
Kim Aiello said one of Olivia’s eyes was open and the other was closed, and she was not able to communicate with her family. As they tried to walk her to their car to go to the emergency room, her daughter collapsed.
“We called an ambulance,” she said. “They thought she was dehydrated.”
The ambulance was going to take her to Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, but they were notified it was full, so Olivia was taken to Loyola. Kim Aiello said “from there, everything was a complete flash.”
Bonwit explained that a small percentage of people who get viral colds are going to have bacterial sinusitis, which occurs as a complication of a cold. Since Olivia’s was severe, it made its way into her brain within her skull.
“The neurosurgeons made an incision in her scalp and drilled into her skull to find where the puss and inflammation was in her skull,” Bonwit said. “They had to take a section of skull bone [out] to allow the brain to swell outward.”
He explained that if this was not done, the swelling would have worsened. With no place for the swelling to go, the diseased areas of the brain would have been pushing on the healthy parts of the brain, and he said when this happens, it squeezes the blood vessels that provide circulation. He said that can be fatal.
Olivia’s neurosurgeon was Dr. Douglas Anderson, but Bonwit was also overseeing her case. The doctors knew what was happening to Olivia from her CT scan upon arriving at the hospital.
“The whole time, I didn’t have time to feel anything,” Kim Aiello said. “It was sheer panic and survival mode.”
Kim Aiello said after surgery, Olivia got the pinkness back in her cheeks. She said she knew she was feeling better immediately. She said Olivia is doing “beautifully.” She’s going to therapy. She’s also scheduled to have a plastic piece put into her skull where the bone was removed. The surgery will be in March.
Olivia has a tutor from Elm Middle School who comes to her home so she can keep up with her studies. Olivia’s doctors hope she can return to school after spring break.
“She never complained, not even once,” Kim Aiello said. “She’s a strong kid.”
To donate, visit her Go Fund Me Page here.
Maryann Pisano is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
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