A young girl in the United Kingdom has been nicknamed "bionic" after she was hit and dragged by a car but calmly got up and walked off afterwards. The accident took place in 2016 when she was only seven years old. As per the doctors, she has a genetic condition so unique she may be the only person in the world with the symptoms, as per a report in Huffington Post. The teenager, Olivia Farnsworth, has a rare chromosome condition known as chromosome 6 deletion, which does not make her feel pain, hunger or fatigue.
Her mother, Niki Trepak had said at that time that she had no "sense of danger". "Doctors have called her the bionic girl, she's made of steel. She's got no sense of danger. She got run over and dragged down the street by a car and she didn't complain," she added.
"She was dragged about ten car lengths down the road. It was horrendous, I don't think it's something I will ever get over. I was screaming and all my other children were screaming as she ran out But Olivia was just like, 'What's going on?' She just got up and started walking back to me. The hospital said she's bionic. Because of the impact she should have had severe injuries. She had a tyre mark on her chest. But her only injuries were she had no skin on her toe or her hip. The doctors were busy giving her CT scans, x-rays, trying to find injuries but there was nothing. She was really lucky. The doctors think what saved her from injury was she didn't tense up," she continued.
According to the mother, her daughter began to exhibit symptoms of her illness when she was just a few months old. Among the drawbacks of her daughter's illness, Niki stated that her hair didn't grow and she had terrible colic. "She had no hair until she was about four-and-a-half. People called her a boy all the time. She also once fell badly and ripped her lip off and didn't say anything. She had to have major plastic surgery to correct it," she told the outlet.
Ms Trepak also recalled Olivia stopped sleeping during the day when she was about nine months old. "But as she got older, she never needed sleep. She survived on about two hours a night and was never tired," she said. The mother then used medication to put her to sleep.
Ms Trepak then stated that Olivia started rejecting her milk when she was only a couple of months old. "She didn't feed, when she was nine months old she started rejecting my milk. I thought she didn't like it but since then, she's never liked food. She's almost become conditioned to eat, she eats at school because everyone else does but she doesn't really need it. She never gets hungry. At home she will go through phases of eating the same thing for months and months and then go off it - once it was milkshakes, once butter sandwiches, once chicken noodles," she added.
Recalling an incident where her daughter hurt her lip and needed plastic surgery to fix it, Ms Trepak said that she did not flinch once while the doctor examined her. "I remember when she was at nursery, one day they rang me and told me she'd fallen and her bottom teeth had gone through her bottom lip. When I arrived to take her to hospital, she wasn't even crying. She had to have plastic surgery and when the surgeon was examining her, he was pulling her lip and she wasn't even flinching. He said to me, there's something not right about her."
Meanwhile, chromosome 6p deletion is a "chromosome abnormality that occurs when there is a missing copy of the genetic material located on the short arm (p) of chromosome 6", as per the National Organisation for Rare Disorders. Individuals with chromosome 6p deletion frequently have behavioural issues, intellectual disabilities, developmental delays, and unique facial traits.
