Exclusive | Girl, 4, couldnt walk or speak after getting rhabdomyolysis, which killed NYC Marathon runner, from common cold
A New Jersey tot was left unable to walk and speak after developing rhabdomyolysis from the common cold, according to her father, who’s trying to raise more awareness of the rare disorder that killed a New York City Marathon runner this week.Ali Modica was just 4 when an apparent mild sickness resulted in heart and kidney failure, leading to a brain injury that left her requiring full-time care and intensive physical and occupational therapy.“We thought it was the common cold running through the body,” Ali’s father, 38-year-old Joe Modica, told The Post, explaining how he, his wife, and their two younger sons, also fell ill with mild symptoms around the same time on Jan.6, 2024.“My 7-month-old got it first.
Coughing, sneezing.And then it just ran through everybody.
She was the last one to get it so we didn’t think anything of it,” he added.“On the Friday night, Ali went to bed on her own.Then she came in our bed in the middle of the night.
That wasn’t uncommon,” Joe said.“But then in the morning, I felt her body.It was really cold, and she wasn’t warming up.
She didn’t want to walk, so I brought her downstairs and she didn’t want to eat breakfast,” he said.“So I told my wife, ‘Her lips are purple; she has to go to the hospital.’ That was the sign she was oxygen-deprived,” the dad from Old Bridge said.At the hospital, “we found out her heart was failing,” said Joe, who has documented Ali’s struggles on social media.Due to a lack of pediatric ECMO at the initial hospital, Ali was taken via ambulance during a severe winter storm to a hospital two hours away in Philadelphia.As soon as they got to the cardiac floor, Ali “coded,” and what had once seemed like a common cold or the flu was now full-blown heart failure.“She had no heartbeat for 18 minutes,” Joe explained.Ali’s kidneys, lungs, heart, and liver were all failing, but doctors were able to get a pulse back and hooked her up to an ECMO machine, and she was ...