GARLAND, Texas (WSVN) — A Texas family is in mourning after a 4-year-old girl died from complications of the flu.
According to Fox 4, Ashanti Grinage’s father, Martell Grinage, said his daughter began showing cold-like symptoms on Sunday evening after church.
By Tuesday, she was taken to the emergency room with a 103-degree fever.
There, tests revealed that she had flu type A. She had not been vaccinated.
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Grinage said doctors sent Ashanti home once the fever subsided and recommended that they give her honey and lemon for her sore throat and over the counter medications to keep her fever down.
By Wednesday, she no longer had a fever, but she did have other mild symptoms. Grinage said he gave his daughter a pep talk before he went to work.
“‘You’re getting over it. You just gotta cough. We’re gonna play tonight when I get home.’ And I meant that,” he told Fox 4, voice cracking with sorrow. “I thought we was gonna play hide-and-seek or just do something, you know? But I’m never gonna have that time again.”
However, by Thursday, her condition worsened, and she was lethargic. Her mother took her back to the emergency room where she was diagnosed with pneumonia. She died later that day.
“In four days, I lost my girl. A total of four days,” Grinage said.
Grinage said the family is trying to figure out how it happened so fast. They said Ashanti had no underlying health issues and was otherwise healthy.
“I feel like I let her down, and I lied to her because I told her I’d never let nothing bad happen to her,” he said in tears. “That’s what’s killing me.”
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