Watch the video of the girl below.
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When Wendy Wong, 41, was still pregnant with her daughter Savannah, a doctor actually advised her to just abort and “start again” because her baby had been conceived with a “bad egg” and had Cystic Hygroma. This is a rare condition that affects about one percent of newborns and leads to a build-up of fluid-filled cysts.
However, the mom from Newcastle Upon Tyne decided to push through with her pregnancy and has now proven the naysayers wrong as Savannah is now thriving. She was born bearing a tumor the size of her head but was successfully treated. She is now a beautiful 5-year-old.
Both Wendy and husband Alex, 38, now live in Nevada and are letting others know their story to prove to parents that Cystic Hygroma is manageable.
Wendy said: “When I was 22 weeks pregnant I saw a doctor who told me there was a lump on my baby’s neck and he would need a couple of weeks to do some research on what it could be.
“He made us sit for two weeks, when we went back to the doctor and he told me to abort our baby at 24 weeks, and that we could ‘start again.’
“I told him that I could feel her moving inside me; there was no way I could go through with a termination.
“He said there are two options, I could class the baby as a bad egg, or go through with it and she’ll either die inside me after birth or on the operating table.
“We did some research and I demanded a second opinion.
“We saw another doctor who told us that he’d seen much worse cases than ours, so we were determined to fight it.
“There are a lot of single moms and families that think they can’t have a baby with this condition and I want to tell them that this condition is manageable and to look at my daughter for proof.”
An experimental drug called Sirolimus played a huge part in Savannah’s treatment and allowed her to go home after two months in the hospital. The drug works by draining the cysts in the body and it was added to Savannah’s milk.
On June 24, 2019, she celebrated her 5th birthday and has never been healthier.
Alex added: “Doctors suggested the experimental treatment and it worked so well, watching Savannah every day is the best part of all of this.
“Seeing her do anything, whether it’s something usual or not has provided us with such joy.”
Early detection is crucial for Cystic Hygroma because if detected too late, the survival rate drops to 10 percent.
Savannah’s has certainly defied all pronouncement that she was a “bad egg” and she has proven to be a happy and capable little girl.
Savannah graduated from preschool in June 2018 and managed to get her first diploma. She is currently visiting her extended family in Newcastle Upon Tyne to celebrate her fifth birthday.
Wendy said: “I wish everyone knew how capable they can be at coping with this conclusion to their pregnancy, moms have messaged me online asking about Savannah and the reality of the condition.
“I just tell them that there’s nothing stopping their child in having a completely full life, and Savannah is evidence of that.
“If I could go back now to the moment the doctor told me to get rid of her, I would call him a bunch of nasty names.
“It’s not easy trying to have a baby, he was very anal about everything and he just thought because he was the doctor, we should listen to him.”
Alex added: “We’re glad that we didn’t, and now we have our wonderful daughter in our lives.”