How Mia Wilkinson lost her arms and legs because of flu

• Mia Wilkinson, age 4, went from being a healthy little girl to being very sick in just 48 hours.
• Mia got the flu, and when it was over, both her arms were cut off below the elbow, and both of her legs were amputated below the knee.
• The Wilkinson family wants more people to know about sepsis, a deadly illness consequence, so other families don’t have to go through what they did.

Mia Wilkinson enjoyed a 2017 Friday morning with her relatives. She complained of stomach pain in the afternoon and puked at supper.

Saturday morning, a doctor diagnosed the 5-year-old with gastro. By Saturday afternoon, she was unable to talk and bewildered. Mia’s parents rushed her to the hospital. She said her legs ached then.

Mrs. Wilkinson added, “Before Mia, we’d never gone to the hospital, and we had a 2-year-old daughter.”

Mia developed influenza B and viral myositis, which causes aching muscles. She was instructed to relax. Mia returned to the hospital on Sunday with a slight purple rash on her legs.

She had something called sepsis. Prof. McMillan said, “Sepsis is a condition in which an infection like the one Mia had spread from one part of the body to the rest of the body. This is a very serious situation.”

“Sepsis can be fatal or can have a profound effect on the health of a child.”

Mia’s black hands and feet made for a dreadful morning. Her low blood pressure required medication for her brain and other organs. The drug blocked blood from reaching her arms and legs. Mia was awakened after being on life support for six days. She had survived, but she was still sick. More of her hands and feet became black as the injuries became obvious. Mia’s arms and legs were amputated a week and two months later.

Peter and Amy Wilkinson worry about their kids catching the flu. They encourage parents to vaccinate their kids and be cautious of flu consequences.

They also want parents to know what to look for in sepsis and feel comfortable talking to their child’s doctor about the possibility of sepsis. “The majority of Australians have never heard about sepsis and do not know what to look for. We had never heard of it either,”   Mrs. Wilkinson said.

“Any infection, whether it be viral like the flu or bacterial like a UTI (urinary tract infection), anything like that can lead to sepsis and can lead to your child being critically ill.”

Prof. McMillan said that she was worried about how vulnerable children under the age of five were this year because many of them had not built up natural immunity during the pandemic. “Vaccine fatigue” was another worry of hers.

She said, “We’d like to see a higher number of the under-fives vaccinated against influenza because we know how important it is to protect them from this severe disease,” Prof. McMillan said there was “a lot of misinformation” about the flu vaccine and asked Australians to talk to a trusted health professional or use reliable sources like the government’s health direct website if they had any questions.

Australians are reminded not only to get vaccinated but also to do things like wash their hands and stay home when they are sick.

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