Medical mystery: Boy sleeps for 11 days, confounding docs
Doctors in Kentucky baffled after seven-year-old has trouble staying awake, talking and walking.
A 7-year-old boy's mysterious medical issue that caused him to sleep for 11 days straight has puzzled the doctors working to treat him. Wyatt Shaw, 7, served as a ring bearer at a relative's wedding in early October and fell asleep after a long day of celebrating, WDRB reported.
"He was perfectly fine," Rhonda Thompson, the boy's grandmother, told The News-Enterprise. "He danced all night. He was so outgoing. He has just got the sweetest nature."
But when Amy Shaw, the boy's mother, went to wake him the next morning, she realized something was wrong. He reportedly complained of a stomach ache and said his head hurt.
“I tried to wake him up, and he fell back to sleep,” Shaw, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, told the news station. "[I'd say,] 'Wyatt, Wyatt, Wyatt!' And he fell back to sleep again."
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Shaw took her son to the doctor and was immediately sent to Norton Children's Hospital in Louisville, where he continued to sleep for 10 additional days, The News-Enterprise reported. Doctors initially suspected a virus or bacteria.
“Every test they did came back clear," Shaw said.
Wyatt was eventually given medication typically used to treat seizures, which helped to wake him, but they still can't figure out what caused him to fall into such a deep sleep. He's also having trouble walking and talking, WDRB reported.
"[The doctors] said, 'We'll probably never know, but we're just going to treat him now with rehab to get him better,'" Shaw said, adding that her son is still recovering in the hospital.