A six-year-old girl suffers from a rare disease which has fractured nearly every bone in her body.
Zoe Lush has fractured almost every bone in her body and was almost internally decapitated after bones in her neck began to wear away. Even just sneezing could result in a broken rib, while a fall could be catastrophic for the little girl.
Zoe, who’s from Huntington Beach, California, broke several bones while she was still in the womb, she suffered a shattered collarbone during birth and broke another 100 bones before she was a year old.
Her Mom Chelsea, who’s now 27, was just 20-years-old when she fell pregnant with Zoe and doctors advised her to abort the baby, she however refused. The condition she has is called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), and is caused by a genetic mutation and affects just one in 15,000 people in the UK and up to 50,000 people in the US.
Zoe’s mother, Chelsea Lush, said: “Zoe is very fragile, she literally breaks in the wind. There have been some close calls but she astonishes us every single day. The doctors said she wouldn’t even make it through birth but now she’s coming up to her seventh birthday.”
Treating Zoe’s broken bones has become part of her parent’s everyday lives, with them even learning to splint the fractures themselves.
Curtis, a surgical technologist, mentioned: ‘Zoe has broken countless amount of bones – we stopped counting at a 100 at around her first birthday. We used to keep a list because we go to a yearly clinic where we had to update them but we stopped counting because it was pointless – we knew she would be breaking bones for the rest of her life.”
Zoe receives physical therapy and her stronger muscles have started to somewhat protect her bones, meaning the fractures are less frequent than they were before.
The 6-year-old has also had metal rods inserted into her limbs and in July 2016 she had neck surgery to stabilize her spine. Since then, she has worn a neck brace which will be removed later this month.
Despite all the challenges she faces, Zoe is a happy child who enjoys baking, painting and playing with her little brother Felix.
Chelsea said: “Zoe is a social butterfly with all of the other kids. She doesn’t notice any differences that they see and she will make friends with everyone that she meets. She is able to do every other thing that other kids are, other than run on their feet but she can race them just as fast in her wheelchair. I would not change Zoe and I would never ever take anything back. In the future, I hope she has the same opportunities as everyone else and above everything I just want her to be happy.”