Baby was suffering from a fatal brain disorder—an anonymous donation worth $47K changed the course of events
Hope, effort and generosity might alter things for people in seemingly impossible situations. One baby's family experienced just that after she was born with a fatal brain disorder and was given weeks to live. The baby, Millie, was born in August 2023 and had a severe congenital brain disorder called alobar holoprosencephaly (HPE) that affects one in 10,000 live births, per Fox News. The baby's parents, Bill and Meg Longhenry, were eventually shown a way to treat the condition and then a donation came in and gave them hope.
Millie is the Longhenry family's second child and most babies with her condition don't survive more than one week. "We found out that she has a rare brain malformation where part of her brain didn't develop and the other part didn't develop correctly. So there's no division between the two hemispheres and the middle is hollow." Meg recounted. The parents were told that their daughter had a severe form of the disease. The mom continued, "Millie should have been a miscarriage or a stillbirth. She should have died moments after birth." Bill pointed out that 95 percent of babies with Millie's condition don't survive beyond the first few months, according to the doctors.
"Anyone who survives past that requires an enormous amount of medical care, like feeding tubes and breathing tubes. Usually, they have no brain function," Bill added. Millie was in the hospital for two months and was then sent home on hospice care with four to six months to live. But the parents were not ready to give up on hope yet. "God had something else in mind. God had a different plan and only God was able to really make that decision," the dad went on. A friend recommended Dr. Brandon Crawford, a functional neurologist at the NeuroSolution Center of Austin, to the family. Dr. Crawford specialized in treating people without drugs or surgery, in non-invasive ways. He looked at the baby's MRI scans and examined her and told her parents that she might actually get better.
The doctor explained that the higher portion of the baby's brain was intact and working well. "I started to get the idea that this kiddo is really trying — she's not on the decline, she's actually really fighting to live her life in this world." They formulated a treatment plan that involved laser light therapies and acoustic wave therapy, which uses sound waves to help stimulate the natural healing process. The baby had started doing quite well. "For example, she can clearly see and she responds to visual cues — yet she doesn't have the majority of those visual pathways developed in her brain. That means her brain has rewired and remapped the ability to see and that's the amazing part, that the brain is able to do that."
Despite all the progress, the family faced a point where they might have had to stop the treatment because of financial constraints. "I said, 'Don't worry about it, just come. There's no way I'm dropping care with Millie — we've come too far,'" Crawford explained. In the meantime, a patient who had been following Millie's story came forward and decided to donate $47,000, the outstanding balance for the little girl's treatment. "It's just impossible to understand that level of generosity from a stranger. We have to pursue this treatment, but it's not covered by insurance, so we're just doing whatever we can to make it work," the dad admitted. They eventually found out who the donor was and reached out to her to thank her for her incredible kindness that saved Millie's life.