Health

Medical miracle: Girl, 6, walks after being declared 99.8% brain dead

Plucky Gold Coast youngster Mackinlee defies all odds to recover from an horrific car crash that killed her grandma.
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Only eight months ago, Mackinlee Anderson’s family was told to expect the worst. Not only had the horrific car crash which had so severely injured the six-year-old claimed her grandmother’s life, but it was likely that Mackinlee, if she survived, would never walk or talk again.

The six-year-old had been in a tragic car crash in Port Macquarie, NSW, which killed her grandmother and injured her mother and brother.

Her fundraising page states: “Day 2: the Neurosurgeon said I was 99.8% brain dead.”

Mackinlee’s list of injuries was frightening:

  • broken pelvis in 3 places,

  • broken femur,

  • ruptured bladder,

  • dislocated hip,

  • extensive brain trauma and extreme brain injury,

  • left side paralysis.

And the youngster was put into an induced coma for 15 days.

“We were pretty much in a place there where the doctors thought there was no hope for her,” her mother, Kylee, told nine.com.au.

Medical miracle: Mackinlee was in hospital for more than five months with doctors saying she would never walk or talk again. Source: GoFundMe

Last September, the six-year-old was in a tragic car crash on the Pacific Highway in Port Macquarie, NSW, involving four cars and a semi trailer. It killed her grandmother on impact and injured her brother and Kylee. For the next five months Mackinlee was in hospital, including two weeks in ICU.

Just last week, Mackinlee took her first steps unaided since the accident.

“It is amazing, we are still just in shock,” Kylee told nine.com.au. “Mackinlee amazes me every day with her determination. Every day the doctors say she can’t do something and the next day she can do it.”

The single mum-of-four adds: “She takes us by surprise every day. They told me that she wouldn’t be the same little girl. Well, she is the same little girl she was before the accident.”

The best Mother’s Day for Kylee and Mackinlee. Source: GoFundMe

Family and friends have set up an online fundraiser on GoFundMe to help with Mackinlee’s ongoing medical costs.

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