Since being diagnosed in early November, Anaiah, the youngest of two daughters of Darius and Lucia Prier, has been hospitalized at INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center at Oklahoma City, then admitted to the medical rehabilitation unit at Bethany Children’s Health Center, where she received immunotherapy and extensive physical and occupational therapy to help her regain normal function.
OMAS impacted Anaiah’s eyes, movement, arms, upper and lower body, and speech, her mother said.
From November until Anaiah was released from the rehabilitation center last week and returned home to Stillwater, Oka., her mother never left her side.
The active and energetic teenager who played middle school basketball and tennis will continue receiving infusion treatments and physical therapy at home in hopes of regaining her ability to walk.
“Shock and disbelief” is how Elmon Prier described his reaction to the illness that has impacted his granddaughter.
“It’s been a real shock to us,” said her grandmother, Wilhelmina Prier.
In early November, Lucia Prier received a call from her daughter’s tennis instructor, who said her temperature was 104.8. On the court, he said Anaiah was very uncoordinated.
“That was not like her,” her mother said.
That’s when her “mother’s instincts” took over, she said. She drove her daughter to the local emergency room when she displayed rapid eye movements, tremors and the inability to walk.
She was diagnosed with OMAS.
“Nothing prepares you to hear something like that,” her mother said. “There were a lot of questions. There is fear. I wanted my baby to be OK at the end of the day.”
She paused on the phone, then added: “I had to find peace, put faith in God and trust the medical teams.”
Anaiah, an eighth grader, has regained most of her mobility above her waist, but has limited mobility below her waist, requiring her to use a wheelchair.
“We’re learning to function as a ‘new normal,’” her mother said.
While she stayed with her daughter in the hospital, her husband, Darius: 46, a 1995 Middletown High School graduate and an academic dean at Oklahoma State University, cared for their 17-year-old daughter, Ariana.
The Priers live about 90 minutes from the hospital.
“We all have a new appreciation for everything,” her mother said. “It has opened up my eyes on a lot of different things. Your faith kicks in 100 percent. There is a reason for everything.”
Wilhelmina Prier remembers a day when a stranger knocked on the front door of her Middletown home. It was a woman who heard about what happened to Wilhelmina’s granddaughter. She wanted to help the Prier family with medical bills.
The woman handed Wilhelmina an envelope with a $100 bill inside.
“I called her an angel,” Prier said.
Watching as the disease ripped apart her son’s family, then reunited them, has taught Wilhelmina Prier an important lesson, she said.
“Just when things are at the worst, people can be the best,” she said. “People really want to help.”
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