Sun, summer and nature. For Tiffany Sisco, a young American mother, the day looked perfect. Until she inspects her five -week baby’s body.
“I found this tiny tick on its ankle”
As she said in a report broadcast on the American channel Channel 5 Boston, Tiffany Sisco was walking with her sister and baby, Lily, on one of the many cycle paths of Martha’s Vineyard, an island in the Massachusetts, in the United States. A beautiful sunny day with the family that took a dramatic turn. Because when she returns home and she carries her baby to her arms, the young mother realizes that something is wrong. “I found this tiny tick on her ankle,” she recalls. A tick that Tiffany Sisco had not seen before, his little Lily being wrapped in a blanket, installed in a stroller throughout the ride. If Lily’s mother manages to remove the tick, “a week later”, her baby “begins to have 40 ° C of fever”. Everything then goes very quickly.
The baby’s brain started to swell “
Emergency transport by plane to the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Little Lily receives immediate care. Because his condition is more and more worrying. In prey to convulsions despite the prescription of antibiotics, the health of the baby declines day by day. Throughout his hospitalization, his brain begins to “swell” and add to this breathing difficulties. So many consequences that lead Lily in a pediatric intensive care unit. After several days of hospitalization, it appears that the tick that bit the little Lily was carrying the Powassan virus.
A rare and potentially deadly virus
The Powassan virus is a rare and potentially fatal virus, transmitted by ticks (such as Lyme disease). It takes its name from the city of Powassan in Ontario, a province of Canada where the virus was discovered in 1958, as explained by the Center for National Collaboration of Infectious Diseases in Canada (CCNMI). People infected with the Powassan virus suffer from influenza symptoms, some even have no symptoms. Generally, these appear between a week, as for Lily, and a month. Fever, headache, vomiting, general weakness are warning signs. In the most serious cases, people with virus can develop a serious “encephalitis or meningitis type” disease. This is unfortunately the case with little Lily …
“Will she be able to walk?”
Since then, doctors have administered antiepileptics to Lily. And although it remains under medical observation, for her mother Tiffany, the concern continues to increase. “Will she be able to walk?” Will she be able to do normal things that we don’t even think about? “Wonders face camera. “She is a fighter. He is a very strong child. And we are there for her,” said Marcus, Lily’s father. While the young parents watch over their still hospitalized baby, the Martha’s Vineyard health authorities have launched an investigation. For information, three cases of Powassan viruses were identified in the state of Massachusetts in 2025, but the case of Lily has been the first recorded on the island of Martha’s Vineyard in 20 years.
