A pediatric critical care doctor's quick, outside-the-box thinking saved the life of a 7-year-old girl who'd contracted a rare case of bubonic plague while camping in southwest Colorado. 
 
 Sierra Jane Downing had come upon a half-eaten squirrel while on a picnic with her family on Aug.19 in Pagosa Springs. A passionate animal lover, the young girl asked her parents if she could bury the animal. Her mother said no. 
 
 "We told her to stay away from it, but when she went down to the creek to play with her 13-year-old sister, Sierra Jane went back to the squirrel, put her sweatshirt down next to it, and then picked up the sweatshirt and put it around her waist," her mother, Darcy Downing, told ABC News. 
 
 Five days later, Sierra Jane woke up with a fever and was vomiting, and by 9 p.m. her father found her lying on the bathroom floor. When he picked her up to bring her back to bed, the girl threw up again and then had a seizure. 
 
 At that point the girl's dad knew something was very wrong, and he rushed her to the local hospital near their Pagosa Springs home. 
 
 Sierra Jane's clear chest X-ray and only slightly elevated white blood cell count offered local doctors no clue that Sierra Jane had contracted the disease that wiped out one-third of Europe's population in the 14th century. 
 
 While the doctors called around to other Colorado hospitals, they managed to bring Sierra Jane's temperature down from 107 to 103 degrees. After speaking with doctors at the Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children in Denver, they had Sierra Jane flown there. When she arrived at 5 a.m. the next day she still very sick but stable, so doctors placed her in the hospital's intermediate care unit under continuous monitoring. 
 
 By 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Sierra Jane's condition had worsened and she was transferred to pediatric ICU for septic shock. 
 
 "It was touch-and-go for a while, and all we could do is pray," her father, Sean Downing said. Read: Plague, Hantavirus, West Nile: How to Avoid Them Doctors initially thought that Sierra Jane's altered mental state -- which included delirium and hallucinations -- was a result of a dose of the antibiotic ceftriaxone. 
 
 Dr. Jennifer Snow, the pediatric critical care specialist whose quick thinking proved so important, ran some blood tests on Sierra Jane, as the girl was in disseminated intravascular coagulopathy, meaning her blood would not clot. Snow then reinterviewed the family about where Sierra Jane had been and what she might have been exposed to. 
 
 "Mom told us the story of the exposure to the dead squirrel, and exposure to mouse droppings in chicken coops, and exposure to a dead skunk," Snow told ABC News. 
 
 By then Snow was getting an inkling of what Sierra Jane might have contracted. Snow did an immediate literature search, and found a report of a 16-year-old with fulminant septic shock in the chest whose cause of death was listed as bubonic plague. 
 
 Snow promptly contacted Dr. Wendi Drummond, a pediatric infectious disease specialist, who recommended starting the girl on gentamicin, an antibiotic used to treat many types of bacterial infections. 
 
 Sierra Jane completed her course of antibiotics on Wednesday and could be going home by the end of the week, according to Drummond. 
 
 This is the first case of bubonic plague that either Snow or Drummond had seen in their careers. In Colorado, the disease, that had killed an estimated 25 million Europeans more than 500 years ago and was once called the Black Death, had not been seen since 2006. 
 
 Bubonic plague is generally transmitted to people through the bites of infected fleas but can also be transmitted by direct contact with infected animals. Doctors at Rocky Mountain Hospital found tiny bites around Sierra Jane's torso, where she had tied that sweatshirt after it had been placed next to the dead squirrel. 
 
 While Sean Downing said that his daughter is "doing fantastic and now waiting for her lipase levels to go down," he said that he is amazed at how the community he lives in came together to support his family, who was combatting this rare disease just after their home had been foreclosed upon. 
 
 "I feel there's so much [danger] about bubonic plague and the Black Death, but it has been a catalyst for amazing things in our community. A whole town came together," he said. 
 
 "We would just sit and weep after hearing these things, and people would bring food and gifts for us and Sierra Jane. I hope that the infection of love never dies." ||||| The parents of 7-year-old Sierra Jane Downing thought she had the flu when she felt sick days after camping in southwest Colorado. 
 
 Seven-year-old Sierra Jane Downing from Pagosa Springs, Colo., hugs her teddy bear while her father Sean Downing and mother Darcy Downing talk about her recovery from Bubonic Plague at the Rocky Mountain... (Associated Press) 
 
 Seven-year-old Sierra Jane Downing from Pagosa Springs, Colo., smiles during a news conference about her recovery from bubonic plague at the Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children at Presbyterian/St. Luke's... (Associated Press) 
 
 Jennifer Snow, MD, pediatric intensivist in the pediatric intensive care unit, center talks to the media about the recovery of seven-year-old Sierra Jane Downing's recovery from Bubonic Plague at the... (Associated Press) 
 
 Seven-year-old Sierra Jane Downing from Pagosa Springs, Colo., looks on while surrounded by the medical staff and parents Sean and Darcy Downing during a news conference talking about her recovery from... (Associated Press) 
 
 Seven-year-old Sierra Jane Downing from Pagosa Springs, Colo., is pushed to a news conference about her recovery from Bubonic Plague by her mother Darcy and father Sean Downing along with nurses at the... (Associated Press) 
 
 Seven-year-old Sierra Jane Downing, from Pagosa Springs, Colo., watches while her father Sean Downing and mother Darcy Downing talk about her recovery from Bubonic Plague at the Rocky Mountain Hospital... (Associated Press) 
 
 Seven-year-old Sierra Jane Downing from Pagosa Springs, Colo., is pushed in a wheel chair by a nurse following a news conference about her recovery from Bubonic Plague at the Rocky Mountain Hospital for... (Associated Press) 
 
 It wasn't until she had a seizure that her father knew something was seriously wrong and rushed her to a hospital in their town of Pagosa Springs. She had a 107-degree fever, and doctors were baffled by the cause. 
 
 "I didn't know what was going on. I just reacted," Sean Downing said. "I thought she died." 
 
 The Downings eventually learned their daughter was ill with one of the last things they would've thought: bubonic plague, a disease that wiped out one-third of Europe in the 14th century but is now exceedingly rare _ it hasn't been confirmed in Colorado since 2006 _ and treatable if caught early. 
 
 Federal health officials say they are aware of two other confirmed and one probable case of plague in the U.S. so far this year _ an average year. The other confirmed cases were in New Mexico and Oregon, and the probable case also was in Oregon. None were fatal. 
 
 Plague is generally transmitted to humans through the bites of infected fleas but also can be transmitted by direct contact with infected animals, including rodents, rabbits and pets. 
 
 Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that a series of frightening illnesses linked to insects and pests have been surfacing lately across the country, including mosquito-borne West Nile virus outbreaks in Texas and other states, deadly hantavirus cases linked to Yosemite National Park, and some scattered plague cases. 
 
 But with some of the illnesses _ like plague _ this is not an unusually bad year; it's just getting attention. And the number of cases of each disease is driven by different factors. 
 
 "I don't think there's a confluence of any particular set of factors" driving the recent illness reports, said Kiersten Kugeler, a CDC epidemiologist in Colorado who tracks plague reports. 
 
 In Sierra Jane's case, a Pagosa Springs emergency room doctor who saw her late on Aug. 24 called other hospitals, some of whom thought she'd be fine the next day, before the girl was flown to Denver, Sean Downing said. 
 
 There, a pediatric doctor at Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children racing to save Sierra Jane's life got the first inkling that she had bubonic plague. Dr. Jennifer Snow suspected the disease based on the girl's symptoms, a history of where she'd been, and an online journal's article on a teen with similar symptoms. 
 
 Dr. Wendi Drummond, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the hospital, agreed and ordered a specific antibiotic for Sierra Jane while tests were run, later confirming their rare diagnosis. 
 
 It was the first bubonic plague case Snow and her colleagues had seen. 
 
 "I credit them for thinking outside the box," said Dr. Tracy Butler, medical director of the hospital's pediatric intensive unit. 
 
 It's not clear why Colorado hasn't seen another human case until now, state public health veterinarian Elisabeth Lawaczeck said. 
 
 By the night of Aug. 25, Sierra Jane's heart rate was high, her blood pressure was low, and a swollen lymph node in her left groin was so painful it hurt to undergo the ultrasound that detected the enlarged node, Snow said. 
 
 Doctors say the girl could be discharged from the hospital within a week. 
 
 On Wednesday, Sierra Jane flashed a smile with two dimples as she faced reporters in a wheelchair, her pink-toed socks peeking out from the white blanket enveloping her as she held a brown teddy bear. 
 
 "She's just a fighter," said her mother, Darcy Downing. 
 
 Darcy Downing said her daughter may have been infected by insects near a dead squirrel she wanted to bury at their campground on U.S. Forest Service land, even though Darcy had warned her daughter to leave it alone. She remembered catching her daughter near the squirrel with her sweat shirt on the ground. Her daughter later had the shirt tied around her torso, where doctors spotted insect bites. 
 
 The bubonic plague, or Black Death, killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe in the Middle Ages. Today, it can be treated with antibiotics, but it's important to catch it early. 
 
 "If she had stayed home, she could've easily died within 24 to 48 hours from the shock of infection," Snow said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe contributed to this report from New York.
– Another case of bubonic plague is making headlines in the US, this one involving a 7-year-old girl who contracted it after encountering a dead squirrel on a camping trip in Colorado. Animal lover Sierra Jane Downing wanted to bury the squirrel, and disregarded her parents' instructions to leave the animal alone. She snuck back to it, leaving her sweatshirt on the ground near it before later tying the shirt around her waist, reports ABC News. She apparently contracted the disease from insects near the carcass and got ill a few days later; her fever spiked to 107 and she went into a seizure. The girl nearly died, but doctors zeroed in on the rare cause after learning about the camping trip and her exposure to the squirrel, reports the AP. After a course of antibiotics, she's expected to be good as new. Sierra Jane's case—the first in Colorado since 2006—follows that of a man who contracted the plague, or Black Death, in Oregon. And health officials in New Mexico, meanwhile, have seen an uptick in cases among the affluent.