By Tom Wilemon
Ashley Rochester watched as nurses switched out IV bags on her daughter, worrying if the baby girl was going to be OK and wondering how she got lost in the TennCare system.
The child, River DeBoard, had come down with rotavirus, an intestinal virus that causes severe diarrhea in children and can result in death. Fewer children get sick with it since a vaccine was introduced in 2006, but River didn’t get that protection.
“It was bad,” Rochester said. “She got real bad dehydrated. I think she got a total of three or four bags of fluids through an IV. It wasn’t until halfway through the third bag that she started peeing on her own.”
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