Lily Weatherll, 6, was born with a brain abnormality called Hydroanencephaly.
In this condition, the infant does not have large cerebral hemispheres and there is only a very thin layer of medulla, and the rest of the place is occupied by cerebrospinal fluid. You can clearly see this in the picture below.
Many children with such an anomaly die shortly after birth, and if they do survive, they do not live long and almost like "vegetables".
Lily did not die after giving birth and did not die even after a few months, but doctors immediately said that she would never be able to move and express emotions on her own.
The girl's parents, 37-year-old Sienna King and 31-year-old Anthony Wetherell, live in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. The doctors also informed them that their daughter would also be blind and deaf. And her condition will relentlessly worsen with age.
However, the parents did not abandon their daughter and decided to endure the difficulties that arose. And it seems that it is thanks to their care that Lily's condition today is not at all as difficult as predicted.
The girl can recognize the faces of her relatives, can smile, get on her feet, and even attends school twice a week.
Promotional video:
In the picture on the left, a normal brain, and in the picture on the right, a brain with hydroanencephaly. The missing part of the brain is marked in blue.
After the birth of Lily, she did not open her eyes for a whole week and that is why the doctors said that she would be blind.
Hydroanencephaly is not detected by ultrasound and even after childbirth it is not immediately visible. According to the obstetrician, Lily's brain most likely received oxygen starvation during pregnancy and therefore did not develop.
But Lily even in this case was "lucky" more than her twin sister Paige, who was born dead.
Lily's head contains only a thin meninges, a "bag" of fluid and that part of the brain that is responsible for breathing and vital functions of the body. The missing frontal lobe, parietal, occipital and temporal parts of the brain are responsible for a much wider spectrum, including emotions, memory, speech, body coordination, and touch.
The chance of giving birth to such a child is 1 in 250 thousand, and if a child with this diagnosis does not die soon after birth, then as he grows up, in addition to the above problems with vision, movement and hearing, he will face muscle weakness, cramps, edema or lung infection, disorders growth. And all this against the background of severe mental retardation.
Few of such children survive the first year of birth, and people like Lily can be considered unique at all.
According to Lily's mother, the girl looks forward to every day when her father Anthony comes home from work. And because of her understanding of the world around her, she was allowed to attend school twice a week.
Lily still feeds through a tube and receives medications, and none of the doctors and her parents know how long she will live and what awaits her in the future.