Deadly Symptoms: Louisiana Family stunned by boy's sudden death

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(WVUE) -
A Louisiana family is dealing with an unimaginable tragedy as they grieve the loss of their teenage son. For months, they didn't know why as the Centers for Disease Control investigated.

Ashley Prestridge will tell you her son, Isaac, was happy, athletic and healthy, just like any other 14-year-old boy in the ninth grade. But their lives would change forever on Oct. 8.

"My son got sick very quickly, you know. I am a nurse and I could not figure out what it was, and I had no idea it would end up leading to his death," she said.

Isaac was the oldest of Ashley's four children. He and his family all came down with a run-of-the-mill sinus bug.

"None of his symptoms showed anything that I should be been really worried about. It was just like a regular fever virus is what it looked like," Ashley said. "On Oct. 3, that Tuesday, that evening, he popped up with a low-grade fever I treated it with Tylenol we got him an appointment for the next day because he wasn't feeling well and he saw a general practitioner she saw him, she tested him for mono and flu and strep and it all came back negative. She had some blood work done on him."

Isaac complained that his head and knees were hurting. His mother said he was given antibiotics and was sent home. That night, she woke him up at 11 to give him another dose of Tylenol.

"By 5 o'clock the next morning when I went to go check on him and see if he was doing any better, he was only responding to a sternum rub and he could only move his left hand,” Ashley said. “He would just roll back over onto the right side. He appeared in a lot of ways to have had a stroke, and he was lying in a pool of vomit so something had transpired between 11 and 5 a.m."

She called 911 and Issac was airlifted to a hospital in Baton Rouge.

“He went from walking, talking, playing his Xbox to on a ventilator, unresponsive, to he died within a matter of three days," Ashley said.

Her young son who loved baseball, hunting and fishing was gone. And no one was exactly sure what caused his death. The CDC was called in to investigate.

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Issac mom has since been told the cause of her son's death was acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, or ADEM.

LSU health pediatric neurologist Dr. Ann Tilton didn't treat Issac, but we talked to her about the rare disease.

"Even though ADEM does occur in our community and it occurs in all communities, usually people get on the other side of it and do well,” Tilton said. “And so this is truly a tragedy on many levels for that family, because even though this disorder is rare, that was an incredibly rare outcome from it."

It can affect both children and adults. The condition itself is not contagious.

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