Doctors believe a 14-month-old baby who cannot suck, swallow, gag, cough or cry because of a baffling condition could be the only person in the world with the bizarre complaint
Maddison Gill, of Trull, who has spent her whole life until now at Musgrove Hospital, in Taunton, Somerset, needs to be regularly fed and given medication through a tube and has to be watched at all times.
But now doctors are preparing to let her move home after they agreed to implement a rigorous care routine from her own bedroom, the Daily Mail reported.
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Mother Tamsin Whately, 21, said she was ‘really excited’ to know that her daughter was finally coming home and could not believe that she would be able to use the bedroom meant for her.
Doctors first realised something was wrong with Maddison, who was born in October 2011, when she began to gurgle instead of cry when she was born.
But it was only when they gave the tiny tot her first bottle and she turned blue and needed resuscitating that they grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Maddison then spent eight weeks on a neonatal unit while doctors tried to work out her bizarre condition.
Whately and her partner Gene Gill, 23, were able to bring their daughter home in December 2011 but returned only two days later after she began turning grey.
Since then she has undergone numerous operations, including a tracheostomy and a gastrostomy to assist her breathing and eating, but doctors are still unable to diagnose her condition.
“She has an undiagnosed neuromuscular condition. Essentially she doesn''t have reflexes. She looks completely normal and does copy some things like screwing up her face to smile and blowing bubbles, but she can''t cry or swallow or anything like that,” said Whately, a former nursery nurse.
“When she cries she is not using the muscles to make a facial expression, she uses others, so she just sort of screws her face up and whimpers,” she added.u00a0
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