Washington Post: Dravet Syndrome

The January installment of the Medical Mystery column in The Washington Post is on stands today. The story is about an infant in Centerville Iowa that began to exhibit severe seizures shortly after being vaccinated at six months. As the baby developed, the seizures became so severe that she was placed in a medically induced coma for a short period, and medevac'd to nearby Des Moines or Iowa City hospitals multiple times. Ten years later she was finally diagnosed with severe mycolonic epilepsy of infancy, known as Dravet Syndrome, an inherited genetic mutation and completely unrelated to the vaccination. The sketches below were interesting to work on because of the amount of travel that takes place in the story, but ultimately we opted to go with the intensive care scene, since it touched on both the severity and inexplicability of the situation. Art Direction by Brad Walters.