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A 10-year-old girl is fighting for her life at a Texas hospital after contracting a rare brain-eating amoeba while swimming in a river.
Lily Mae Before Labor Day Labor Day with Brazos River, which winds through their backyard in Whitney, Texas, in a small city near Waco. She's coming down with a headache and fever soon after, on Sept. 8. Over the following days, she begins acting strangely, according to her family.
Lily, who had become incoherent and unresponsive, was flown to Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth last Tuesday. Doctors say she contracted Naegleria fowleri, a rare but deadly goal that lives in warm freshwater such as lakes, rivers and hot springs. The single-celled organism typically infects swimmers by traveling through the nose and into the brain.
The fatality rate for Naegleria fowleri infections is over 97%. Only four known in the United States have been identified in the 1960s, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Texas Department of State Health Services did not immediately respond to ABC News's request for Monday morning.
Lily was given an amoeba-fighting pill and was placed in a medically-induced coma.
"She's a fighter," Lily's stepfather, John Crawson, told ABC's ABC affiliate WFAA in an interview Friday night. "And she's stronger than anyone I know."
Although the odds are stacked against her, she is hopeful that she will be the fifth person to survive.
"She's still here with us," her aunt, Loni Yadon, told WFAA, "and we are still fighting."
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