Girl born looking like ’broken doll’ is nicknamed ’the human jigsaw’

Girl born looking like ’broken doll’ is nicknamed ’the human jigsaw’

Mangalore Today News Network

Aug 09, 2014: Kira Yates, 9, has a rare genetic condition which caused deformities to her skull, face, hands and feet.

 A girl of nine born looking like a “broken doll” has been dubbed the “human jigsaw” after doctors rebuilt her piece by piece.

Brave Kira Yates has a rare genetic condition which caused deformities to her skull, face, hands and feet.

Kira Yates, with her mother Michelle, has a rare condition dubbed ’broken doll syndrome’. Her body is being put back together during a series of major operations - including surgery to smash and re-shape her skull

 

Kira (pictured here at a year old) has Apert syndrome - a condition caused by a chromosomal defect

She has endured 14 major operations, including one where surgeons broke her skull and reshaped it.

For her latest procedure, doctors lifted Kira’s sunken face and fitted a metal frame to pull her features forward.

Mum Michelle Yates, 47, explained: “Kira’s bones aren’t like everyone else’s – she’s just a broken doll. She’s had to be put together like a jigsaw.”

Children with Apert syndrome can also suffer from webbed fingers and toes. Kira had to have each of her fingers and toes separated to give her ten digits and was also born with no knuckles

 

Kira before and after her facial reconstruction. During the operation, her skull was smashed and re-shaped. She also had metal plates inserted into her face, which will help build it up and re-shape it

Michelle said Kira’s condition came as a “huge shock” when she was born and added: “Her head was really big at the front, her hands and feet were fused like gloves and she had stumps for big toes.

“It’s a miracle to think how much she has achieved when we think how poorly she was as a baby.”

Kira, of Doncaster, South Yorks, has a severe form of Apert syndrome, which causes bones to fuse and affects one in 100,000 babies.

She had her first operation in the first year of her life and once attended 27 appointments in a single month.

In one procedure she was fitted with metal bars in her neck to support her body and stop her becoming paralysed.

Her most recent surgery at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool, last month took 14 hours.

Kira will wear the metal frame for the next three months and hopes to return to school in September

Smiles: Kira with mum after facial surgery which saw her skull broken by surgeons

She was put in a coma for two days afterwards.          

Michelle said: “She copes very well. But it’s hard for her – she can’t look left and right and she has no knuckles.”

But Kira hopes to be back at school in September.

Her mum added: “It could take her classmates a while to get used to it as her appearance will change quite drastically.

"But the main thing Kira wants is for people to stop staring at her.

“She asks why she is how she is but I just tell her him upstairs wanted to make her special.

"My broken doll is nearly fixed and I’m so proud of her.”