When Whitney Mitchell looks in the mirror, she tries not to concentrate on the reflection.
She looks deeper, into her memory — and there she is. A beautiful creature. Young, long and lithe, carefree in skinny jeans and floppy Converse tennis shoes.
It’s important, she said, to focus on what’s left, instead of what’s missing.
Last November, Whitney got sick.
It seemed like a garden-variety flu bug — nausea, oscillating fever, headache — but standard antibiotics couldn’t beat it back.
Over four days, the 19-year-old Richland College student went from her doctor’s office to the ER, a hospital room, the intensive-care unit at Medical City Dallas Hospital and onto life support.
Surgeons were eventually forced to amputate her arms and legs.
“It was unbelievable how fast she went downhill,” said Whitney’s mom, Patricia Kirven. “We don’t know what caused this, whether it can come back or whether my other kids can get it. We’re living in the unknown, and that’s a scary thing.”
Family members said precisely what happened is a bit of a medical mystery, but a ravenous infection, and her body’s response to it, shut down blood flow to Whitney’s limbs. The medical term for the condition is called septic shock.
A spokeswoman for Medical City did not return calls.
Dr. Amy Wilson, medical director of the Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation, said what happened to Whitney is rare. In about 15 years, she’s only had three or four quad-amputee patients.
“When you have this overwhelming infection, one of the body’s responses is very, very, very critically low blood pressure,” she said.
“The smallest vessels tend to get clogged off and at that point, you start losing limbs, skin, fingers, toes.”
Kirven said she’ll never forget watching the disease march down her daughter’s arms.
“They turned blue and purple, then her nails turned black, and then her hands just started shriveling up,” she said. “Then they didn’t move anymore, and they were just mummified.”
Whitney swam in and out of consciousness. It was, she said, like a dream.
But in her room, life had never been more starkly real. Family members set up camp — a mini research laboratory with a snarl of computer cords and a sea of laptops — trying to help doctors figure out the next move.
‘Bargaining’
One doctor wanted to amputate at the upper thighs and arms. Kirven protested.
She felt warmth on her daughter’s forearms. There must be life under there.
“We got to the point where we were literally bargaining for body parts,” she said. “We were like, ‘Can you cut here? Can you just take the hand? Can you take this part and leave the rest? Can you just take the feet?’ ”
Surgeons were able to sever her limbs below her elbows and knees — an important consideration in the use of prosthetics.
Whitney said she can’t recall much from that time — nearly two weeks past — but she remembers her hands were curled, and cold.
“I knew something was wrong,” she said. “I knew. But my mom kept telling me, ‘It’s going to be OK, baby.’”
The worst moment, Kirven said, was when doctors removed Whitney’s ventilator.
A surgeon told Whitney she would lose her arms and legs. If not, she may die.
“She just let out this noise, I’ll never forget it,” said Kirven, tears in her voice. “It was like, ‘Noooooaaaaaah!’ It was just like this wail. And it just felt like a knife in your heart. I’ll never forget that the rest of my life, the sound she made.”
This week, Whitney left the hospital to a new home in Garland.
Her mother’s apartment in Dallas — which she once shared with her 5-year-old autistic brother Nicholas and 3-year-old sister Alexandra — was too small now.
“I remember right before I went into surgery, my mom just like kissed my hand,” Whitney said, sitting at a countertop in an open kitchen.
“It was hard to believe that my arms and legs were gone. After like 18 years of walking and everything, it was kind of weird not having that anymore.”
Health is on her side
Doctors said her age and good health — she was training to be a dancer — helped save Whitney’s life.
“Whitney’s got a long, long period of rehabilitation in front of her,” said Baylor’s Wilson. “The easiest thing for her will be her ability to return to walking — but I want to be clear, the ‘easies’ are all relative in Whitney’s case.”
Her biggest challenge will be to gain use of prosthetic arms. It can be done, Wilson said, but the therapy will be expensive.
“One of my great fears for Whitney is just being able to get her enough therapy to accomplish the maximum she can be,” Wilson said.
Right now, Whitney is consumed with the basics — learning to brush her teeth and hair, getting on and off the toilet, transferring from her motorized wheelchair into bed.
She's also adjusting to the stares, the new normal with her fiancé, Garrett Foster, and a new dynamic with her mom.
“It’s really a terrible thing that happened to me, but I try to look at the good things, too,” she said. “There are other people worse off than me who can’t move or anything. That’s what I try to remember.”
Last weekend, she went to the movies with friends. Her fiancé lifted her into a theater seat and fed her popcorn.
For a moment, she said, the experience made her long for the simplicity of her former life — walking hand-in-hand through NorthPark Center with her fiancé, hanging up posters in her room, texting on her phone.
“Sometimes it looks kinda weird when I see myself in the mirror and everything’s not there,” she said. “So I just try to look at what’s on the inside.
“I’m still the same Whitney.”