A 10-year-old Texan girl contracts a cerebral amoeba after a swim in the river

A 10-year-old girl is struggling with a rare and usually fatal infection after contracting a brain-eating amoeba while swimming in a river near her home in Texas.

When Lily Avant began to suffer from headaches and fever on Sept. 8, doctors suspected a common viral infection and prescribed ibuprofen and hydration, according to an article by Wendy Scott , his first cousin, on Facebook. According to Scott, before her condition worsened, Before was taken to the emergency room where she was treated for bacterial and viral meningitis.

The girl was then transferred to the Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, where a sprained spine revealed that she had a "rare, aggressive amoeba with a high mortality rate." According to KXAS-TV, doctors determined that she had contracted Naegleria foweleri, a "brain" amoeba found in fresh waters such as ponds, lakes and rivers.

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"We hope we'll have it in time," said his father John Crawson to the chain. "She is a fighter, she is stronger than anyone I know."

Before is now in a medically-induced coma to allow doctors to treat the swelling of his brain, reported KXAS-TV. Her family shares updates on her status through a Facebook group, #LilyStrong, which has more than 16,500 members.

The amoeba enters the nose and travels to the brain, where it can cause primary amoeba meningoencephalitis (AMP), according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Symptoms of brain infection caused by amoeba start approximately five days after infection and may include stiff neck, confusion, lack of attention to people and their environment, loss of balance, convulsions and hallucinations, said the CDC. After the onset of symptoms, patients usually die between 1 and 12 days.

In the United States, only four of the 145 known infected individuals survived Naegleria fowleri from 1962 to 2018.

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