Olivia Farnsworth, a unique case in the world

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The case of Olivia Farnsworth has jumped to the pages of tabloid newspapers, which see in her almost a circus curiosity. She feels no hunger, no sleep, no pain, no sense of danger.

The case of Olivia Farnsworth is one of the most surprising ever reported. We are talking about a British girl who feels no pain, no hunger, no sleep.. These are precisely three of the great human weaknesses and limitations. What happens in a mind that does not register those types of everyday experiences? How can a person who lacks the notion of danger survive?

Everything indicates that his case is unique in the world or, at least, the only one known. When his condition became public a good part of the press began to call her “bionic girl.”

“What makes the world so difficult to see clearly is not its strangeness, but its normality. “Familiarity can blind us.”

-Robert Pirsig-

She and her family have not paid much attention to those nicknames, nor to the media’s insistence on showing her as a rarity. Instead, They have taken advantage of the popularity to start a campaign to raise funds for your case to be investigated scientifically. This will eventually be done by the University Medical Center of Groningen (Holland).

Olivia Farnsworth and her strange characteristics

Olivia Farnsworth was born in the English city of Huddersfield, which is halfway between Manchester and Leeds. She is a beautiful and happy girl, who has grown up normally, although she already manifested some strange symptoms from an early age. His mother She noticed some differences with the other children when she was a baby.

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Olivia almost never cried and her mother, at first, simply thought that she was a calm baby, who did not get upset easily. However, When he started to grow, he also had difficulty sleeping .

She was active all day and from the age of 9 months she never took a nap again.. Despite this, when night came she was still very dynamic and sometimes woke up her parents in the early hours of the morning. Likewise, she didn’t seem to have much of an appetite; She only ate after her parents insisted that she do so. Her mother started calling her “iron baby.”

A striking fact

All these characteristics did not arouse suspicion among his parents. They thought that was simply the temperament of little Olivia Farnsworth. However, when the time came for her to go to school, an event occurred that was completely out of the ordinary. Olivia suffered a fall and suffered a deep wound on her lip. She was bleeding profusely, but she reacted as if it were normal.

When they took her to the hospital, they had to perform a small surgery. The girl showed no sign of pain. This obviously caught the attention of the doctor, the first person to alert the family about this rare condition. Even so, the parents did not know the extent of this rarity.

They verified it some time later, when a vehicle hit the girl. He dragged her for more than 20 meters and then the girl got up, as if nothing had happened.. Doctors later explained that nothing had happened to him, not because he was immune to the damage, but because he had kept his body so relaxed during the accident that no fractures occurred.

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In this way, they discovered that Olivia Farnsworth Not only did he lack sensations of pain, but he also had no notion of danger. Therefore, she had not evaded the car and had not given any importance to the fact that it hit her.

The scientific explanations

There are recorded cases of people who feel no pain, or who have less appetite than normal, or who barely need sleep. However, Olivia Farnsworth’s case is the only one in which all of these characteristics are present simultaneously. Doctors have explained that it is a rare genetic condition caused by the absence of chromosome 6.

In reality, it is not that said chromosome is completely absent, but rather that it surely has such a significant alteration that it basically renders it useless. This deficiency has led to Olivia Farnsworth having to take sleeping pills to sleep.

That is the great tragedy of this girl: just because she doesn’t feel sleepy doesn’t mean she doesn’t need to sleep; The fact that she does not feel hungry does not mean that she does not need to eat. Likewise, the absence of pain does not equate to the absence of damage to her body. For all this, she is someone who needs a lot of care, since It does not have the internal signals that alert it to what it needs to continue living. Luckily, his case is already being studied.