Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender's Top News of the Day. It's free.
A 15-month-old girl from Greenwood Lake, New York, died two days after receiving routine vaccinations during a wellness checkup, leaving her family searching for answers.
Melody Rain Palombi-Malmgren went into cardiac arrest and died on Oct. 19, after receiving three vaccines — for varicella, DTaP and Hib — at her 15-month wellness visit on Oct. 17 with the Herbert Kania Pediatric Group in Warwick, New York, according to News12 the Bronx.
“She was a perfectly healthy child,” her mother, Katherine Palombi, told News12. “I’m in complete shock.”
Palombi told News12 that Melody had waved goodbye to her that morning as she dropped her off at her grandmother’s before leaving for work. As soon as she got to work, Palombi’s mother called, saying Melody was having trouble breathing.
“I was in complete shock. Like, what just happened?” Palombi recalled. “Is she choking on something? Did she get into something? That was my first thought because I’m like, this child is perfectly healthy,” Palombi said.
Melody was rushed to St. Anthony’s Hospital by ambulance after her grandmother performed CPR while waiting for paramedics to arrive.
Palombi rushed home, where she found a police officer waiting. He offered to rush her to the hospital “because he knew how serious it was,” she recalled.
“By the time I got to the hospital, they put me in a room,” Palombi said, “and they just kept saying, ‘We’re working on her.’”
“They were going over everything from that morning because she’d gotten into something,” she said, and “I just kept saying, ‘She had vaccines. A couple of days before this, she had vaccines.’”
Despite several hours of resuscitation efforts by EMTs and medical staff, Melody could not be revived.
“They brought me in the room, and I saw her lying there,” Palombi said. “They said, ‘Time of death: 11:13.’ And I just completely hit the floor.”
Hospital records show Melody suffered liver and kidney failure along with cardiac arrest. The cause of her sudden death remains under investigation pending an autopsy.
The Herbert Kania Pediatric Group declined to comment when contacted by News12 about the incident.
Melody could well have received six vaccines on her final well-child visit, not three, as the DTaP-Hib-IPV vaccine shown on her paperwork is likely the Pentacel 5-in-1 vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, and H influenza type B, according to Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D.
In their book, “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D., senior director of science and research at CHD, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD chairman on leave, shared a study showing that infants died within 3 days of a DTP (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis) vaccine at 7.3 times the rate of those who died 30 days after or later.
Dr. Elizabeth Mumper, president and CEO of The Rimland Center For Integrative Medicine, told The Defender:
“A previously healthy baby died in an Emergency room after suffering a respiratory arrest. Her labs showed elevated enzymes in the liver, heart and muscle, suggesting catastrophic damage. Her electrolytes were abnormal, suggesting her body lost the ability to maintain homeostasis — a balance of body chemistry.
“In investigating sudden deaths in babies, it is crucial to consider all possible causes. In this case, the baby had 4 vaccines 2 days prior. Sudden death is one of the ‘unavoidable unsafe’ reactions to vaccines, and should be considered in the differential diagnosis of what happened to this beautiful baby.
“Analysis of VAERS safety data shows a clustering of ‘sudden infant death syndrome’ cases in the days just following vaccinations. My heart goes out to the family.”
‘Just a coincidence’: Doctors dismissed previous vaccine reaction
Palombi believes the three vaccines Melody received may have overwhelmed her daughter’s body.
She told The Defender Melody developed a fever of 104° within 24 hours of receiving her immunizations at 2 months old. She also suffered a rash all over her body that lasted several days.
Palombi visited two medical centers and her pediatrician, but doctors at the time said a virus was likely to blame for the fever and rash, she said.
“I just kept telling them she just had vaccines,” Palombi said. “And before this, she was fine. There was nothing wrong. They told me, well, it’s just a coincidence that she had vaccines.”
When Melody’s fever had not cleared after a week or so, Palombi called the doctors again and was told Melody had a urinary tract infection.
Melody was not hospitalized during this time, Palombi told The Defender.
‘Trust your gut’
Palombi advised other parents in her News12 interview, “Trust your gut and don’t let them push anything on to your children that you don’t want to do.”
“I just want to keep educating parents on the dangers of vaccines, encourage them to spread them out, give them when the child is older, or get tested for the gene,” Palombi told The Defender.
She referred to the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, or MTHFR, genetic mutation, one of several variations believed to predispose some children to bad reactions to vaccines.
Palombi told The Defender that the publicity about Melody’s death may have already saved a child.
A mother recently reached out to her, saying her 2-month-old child was having an extreme reaction to a vaccine. “The baby was passing blood in the stool and everything else,” she said.
“So I told her, ‘You need to get the baby back to the emergency room immediately,’” Palombi said. “And she did. The pediatrician admitted to this mom, ‘If you didn’t bring the baby in, the baby would have been dead by Monday.’”
Another woman reached out to Palombi to say her grandson died at 6 months old after a well-child visit. “They told her it was SIDS [sudden infant death syndrome],” she said. “That’s not what it is.”
“It’s so sad to keep hearing that I’m not the only one,” she said.
Palmobi said her family is coping the best it can. “It’s hard to focus on anything besides Melody. We can’t believe how this could happen. We’re just completely heartbroken.”
“I think I’m getting by day to day focusing on spreading awareness,” she said.
About Melody
Melody Rain Palombi-Malmgren was born on July 13, 2022, in Warwick, New York. She lived with her parents and grandparents in Greenwood Lake.
“From the very moment she graced our lives, Melody Rain was a beacon of love and joy. Her infectious giggles, warm snuggles, and sweet kisses were a source of endless delight to her family,” the family wrote her obituary.
Palombi told The Defender:
“Melody was literally born an angel. She was the perfect child. She loved the lake. She loved taking walks. She loved animals, especially our dog Sonya. She brought light to everybody who knew her.”
“Melody was a radiant soul who found happiness in the simplest of things,” her mother said in the obituary.
With the help of friends, Palombi has started a GoFundMe to help with the medical expenses and to establish a legacy in Melody’s name.
“We are thinking about starting a foundation, maybe therapy animals, and also spreading awareness about the dangers of vaccines,” she told The Defender.
The Defender on occasion posts content related to Children’s Health Defense’s nonprofit mission that features Mr. Kennedy’s views on the issues CHD and The Defender regularly cover. In keeping with Federal Election Commission rules, this content does not represent an endorsement of Mr. Kennedy, who is on leave from CHD and is running as an independent for president of the U.S.
