A teenager from England has relearned how to walk, talk and swallow again after undergoing an operation last year that is rarely carried out on children, in which doctors stored part of her skull in her stomach.
Ellie Morris-Davies, now 16, had nine surgeries in the space of 13 weeks after being diagnosed with a cavernoma – a cluster of abnormal blood vessels that looks like a raspberry – which does not often have symptoms.
Sky News reports that in May last year, Ellie, started suffering from persistent headaches and nausea and became sensitive to light.
She was soon vomiting up to 16 times a day and, after blood tests and an MRI, was diagnosed with a bleed on her brain caused by a cavernoma.
It can cause seizures, headaches, and other neurological problems like dizziness and slurred speech, but one in 600 people in the UK have symptomless cavernoma, according to the NHS.
A cavernoma with symptoms is diagnosed in around one person in every 400 000, usually aged between 20 and 40.
The teen’s mother said she was hoping it was “just a bad migraine”, but after being transferred to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, Ellie underwent surgery.
The operations included a decompressive craniectomy, where surgeons remove part of the skull to relieve pressure, storing it in the patient’s own stomach to keep it sterile before putting it back.
Despite the life-saving procedure, Ellie deteriorated further and was transferred to intensive care. She underwent more surgeries because the cavernoma was causing more swelling to the brain. She also contracted rare and dangerous infections before her path to recovery.
Ellie, who has been having daily physiotherapy and one-to-one sessions with her dance teacher, has gone from being unable to talk and move the left side of her body to singing on stage.
Her mother said her daughter’s digits and fingers “have been the last to get going, but she’s relearned to walk, talk and swallow, and is working on physio relentlessly”.
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