Brooke Greenberg
| Brooke Greenberg | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Brooke Megan Greenberg January 8, 1993 Baltimore, Maryland, United States |
| Died | October 24, 2013 (aged 20) Baltimore, Maryland, United States |
| Cause of death | Bronchomalacia |
| Known for | Syndrome X Disease |
Brooke Megan Greenberg (January 8, 1993 – October 24, 2013) was an American who remained physically and cognitively similar to a toddler, despite her increasing age. She was about 30 in (76 cm) tall, weighed about 16 lb (7.3 kg) and had an estimated mental age of nine months to one year. Brooke's doctors termed her condition Syndrome X.
Brooke was born on January 8, 1993, to parents Howard and Melanie Greenberg at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. She was delivered by Caesarean section, one month before her due date due to "intermittent growth", weighing just four pounds (1.8 kg). She was born with anterior hip dislocation, a condition that caused her legs to be swiveled upward toward her shoulders; it was corrected surgically. Otherwise, Brooke appeared to be a normal infant. She was the third of four girls born to her parents.
In her first six years, she went through a series of unexplained medical emergencies from which she recovered. She had seven perforated stomach ulcers. She also suffered a seizure. This was followed by what was later diagnosed as a stroke; weeks later, no damage was detected. At age five, Brooke had a mass in her brain that caused her to go into a deep sleep (after confirmation that it was not a coma) for 14 days. The doctors diagnosed the mass as a brain tumor. She later awoke, and physicians found no tumor present. Brooke's pediatrician, Dr. Lawrence Pakula, states that the source of her sudden illness remains a mystery.
During an interview on the talk show Katie, her father stated that between the ages of four and five, she stopped growing.Child Frozen In Time, a documentary about Brooke, was first broadcast on TLC on August 9, 2009.
Over several years, the Greenbergs visited many specialists, looking for an explanation for their daughter's strange condition, yet there was no diagnosis of any known genetic syndrome or chromosomal abnormality. In 2001, when Dateline documented Brooke, she was still the size of a six-month-old infant, weighing just 13 lb (5.9 kg) at 30 inches (76 cm) tall. The family still had no explanation. Brooke's mother Melanie said, "They [the specialists] just said she’ll catch up. Then we went to the nutritionist, the endocrinologist. We tried the growth hormone…". The growth hormone treatment had no effect. Howard, Brooke's father, said, "I mean, she did not put on an ounce, or she did not grow an inch... That’s when I knew there was a problem." After the growth hormone administration failed, the doctors, unable to diagnose a known condition, named her condition Syndrome X.
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