17-month-old Karlie Toland is today considered the only child who managed to survive with five deadly congenital anomalies. When she was born, doctors gave her only 20 minutes of life, believing that the child was doomed.
Carly had cerebral palsy, holoproencephaly (lack of division of the telencephalic into spheres), Di Georg syndrome or missing chromosome 22 syndrome, microcephaly (small head) and encephalocele (part of the brain is outside the skull).
Each of these anomalies, even individually, is considered deadly, and all at once they simply did not give the child any chance. Encephalocele was considered the most dangerous - Carly's part of the brain was outside, right on the bridge of the nose.
After Carly miraculously survived on the first day, the doctors were still sure that she would die a few days later and the child was not even treated, but simply discharged home with her mother so that the girl could calmly suffer with her family.
But Carly stubbornly refused to die, and a month later her parents Gemma McCusker and Kyle Tolland brought the baby for surgery at a Belfast clinic. During the operation, the surgeons carefully removed the outer piece of the child's brain. After the operation, Carly recovered quickly.
Despite her multiple anomalies, the girl learned to crawl and eat from a spoon; in general, she shows a very good development for her condition. Parents are confident that their child will soon begin to walk.
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“She smiles and can laugh when in a good mood. When I look at her, I am proud of my daughter, "says Gemma McCusker," She is a little miracle. I do not know how long she will live, but we are sure that she will ignore all the gloomiest predictions about her condition for a long time to come."
Carly really doesn't look like a kid with serious brain problems at all. Even the photographs show that she is far from a "vegetable".
“After she was discharged from the hospital, our main goal was to look after her exposed brain on her forehead to prevent infection. We wiped it gently with sterile water and regularly rubbed the cerebral fluid that oozed out of it.
During pregnancy, Gemma McCusker was informed that her daughter was likely to have some kind of head abnormality. Gemma assumed that it was a missing ear, eye or something with a nose, but no one expected that part of the child's brain would stick out.