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Fort Worth, Texas – A 10-year-old girl is now fighting to live in a Fort Worth hospital after catching a brain-eating amoeba while she was swimming near her home in central Texas.
Lily Mae Avant was brought to the Cook Children's Medical Center Tuesday after her family started having a headache, fever and becoming incoherent.
Before is now in a medically induced coma.
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The doctors said they contracted a Naegleria fowleri, a unicellular living organism commonly found in warm freshwaters and infecting humans.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, people are infected when water containing Naegleria fowleri enters through the nose.
The amoeba travels to the brain where it destroys the brain tissue. The mortality rate when contracting such an amoeba is greater than 97%, according to the CDC.
Since 1962, only four in every 145 people infected in the United States have survived.
On Friday night, Lily's father-in-law, John Crawson, told the WFAA that he is praying for his daughter to be the fifth survivor.
"If you listen, send your prayers," he said. "And just know that it can happen."
"She's a fighter," he says. "And she's stronger than anyone I know."
A normal bath
The Avant family said the 10-year-old girl had begun to behave strangely after swimming in the Brazos River that winds behind her home in Whitney, just outside Waco.
Before was celebrating Labor Day weekend with her family when she went swimming in the river, which she has done many times, according to her cousin Wendy Scott.
"The water is in Lily's garden," Scott says. "She swam there day after day, the day she was there we had 40 people with her."
When Avant arrived at Cook Children's, she received a pill called Amteba called Miltefosine.
This is a pill that would not have been available at the hospital without Julie and Jeremy Lewis, of Midlothian.
"Our mission is paying off and we are here for Lily," said Julie Lewis.
Julie and her husband lost their son, Kyle, to a brain-numbing amoeba in 2010.
After his death, the Lewis family requested that miltefosine be available in many hospitals. The drug gives a chance of survival to the victims if it is administered quickly.
Miltefosine was not available for Kyle, but in 2016, his parents' dream came true: giving other patients the chance he had never had.
"In a year, it was in twenty or so hospitals," Jeremy said.[Cook Children’s] was the first hospital in the country to have it. We wanted it here because Kyle was there. "
Chris Van Deusen, spokesman for the Texas State Department's Department of Health, said that amoebae were common, but that infections were not there. There is usually zero to one case a year. Lily's case is the first in the state this year.
If you are swimming in fresh water, the state recommends that you hold your nose, use nose clips and avoid diving underwater.
"It's the thing you read about it that does not happen to you, until it happens to you," said Loni Yadon, Lily's aunt.
The power of prayer
Because the family of Avant thinks that she will be the fifth survivor of the deadly infection, they spent five minutes together praying in front of the 10-year-old girl's hospital room, Friday night.
Dozens of family members were present, kissing Crawson and his wife.
The decor was emotional and there were similar scenes throughout central Texas.
Several high school football teams paid tribute to Avant before their matches on Friday night by Crawson. A number of Center Texans also take pictures and are also number 5.
All these articles are on the Facebook page #Lily Strong.
It is there that Crawson finds hope, support and increased conviction that his daughter will succeed.
"It's been difficult, especially when you're supposed to be everyone's rock, but thank goodness, I have so much support," Crawson said.
Lily has already defied the odds, surviving for six days with the infection.
Family and friends stay by her side, waiting for her to kiss them again.
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