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A 3-year-old girl in Arizona was hospitalized on Christmas after developing a rare neurological condition from flu complicationsHarper Le’s dad said he took her to the hospital after she started stumbling and stopped using the left side of her bodyHarper had a CT scan, which showed swelling and blood pooling in her brain, and she was diagnosed with Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM)

A 3-year-old girl in Arizona was hospitalized in an intensive-care unit after developing complications from the flu.

The parents of Harper Le told KOLD that their baby girl developed a rare neurological condition from influenza A complications, which left her unable to use the left side of her body, days after coming down with the flu.

“Every time that she’s ever been sick or her brother’s been sick, we do the same thing as always — the ibuprofen, the Tylenol,” Harper’s father, Ryan Le of Vail, told the outlet. 

“The flu is usually a day or two and then it’s kind of back to somewhat normal,” he explained. “This time it was — we kind of just fell off the edge of a cliff.”

University Medicine Family Medicine Clinic in Tucson, Ariz.

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He said he grew concerned after she reportedly started stumbling around and stopped using the left side of her body, which prompted him to take her to the emergency room on Christmas Day. 

“Watching her not being able to pick up her left side, no sensation, like I said her vocab had just gone down to ‘no’ and that was the only thing she could say — you know it freaks you out a little bit,” the dad recalled to KOLD.

He noted that her behavior was a drastic difference from how she normally was — “super energetic.” Ryan told the outlet that “she’s always laughing, she’s always smiling, she’s always running around doing something.”

He said that doctors took his daughter to get a CT scan, which showed swelling and blood pooling in her brain, per KOLD. She was then diagnosed with Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM), a rare neurological condition that causes inflammation in a person’s central nervous system after a viral infection, per Cleveland Clinic.

“It was definitely a major stomach drop pretty fast,” Ryan recalled getting the news.

Ryan and his wife, Randi, who are both teachers in the Vail School District, said they launched a GoFundMe to pay for their daughter’s medical expenses as she continues her recovery. On the crowdfunding website, they noted that she “is going to require long term care and therapy.”

Ryan told KOLD that her recovery is expected to take more than six months with “homebound healthcare for at least three weeks and then outpatient recovery for OT, PT, and for speech.”

He noted to the outlet that Harper was regaining some movement back and was scheduled to be discharged from the hospital soon. He also urged other parents to seek medical help as soon as possible.

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“If you have, you know, questions, concerns, even the slightest concern, definitely get that help from those medical professionals because, like I said, we tried to wait the couple days like always and now here we are,” Ryan told KOLD.

This comes as flu cases have reportedly been on the rise in the U.S. More than 7 million cases of the flu have been reported this season — which have resulted in an estimated 81,000 hospitalizations and 3,100 deaths. 

The rise in flu cases have mainly been attributed to a variant of Influenza A (H3N2) known as “subclade K,” and experts noted that to mitigate it is by getting the flu shot.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that “everyone 6 months and older should get a flu vaccine every season, especially people at higher risk.”