A four-year-old girl is baffling medics with a four-month-long fever and a string of other agonising conditions.
Little Isabella Rivero – from the city of Corrientes, in the Argentinian province of the same name – suffers from symptoms like random fainting and joint cracking.
Others include sudden eye pain and blisteringly painful headaches so severe she often passes out.
Sometimes – says her family – she cannot even recognise her mother, Veronica Rivero, who is desperate for a medical answer to her daughter’s plight.
Her mother told how she rushed her to the local hospital when she suddenly started becoming weak, losing weight and getting nosebleeds “out of nowhere”.
But countless examinations by local medics have not been able to find a clear cause.
Shockingly, an entire specialist team made up of endocrinologists, an infectologist, and a rheumatologist have not been able to solve the mystery.
Veronica, who works as a massage therapist and is apparently the girl’s sole caregiver, claims the tests and studies have virtually left her penniless.
Without proper health insurance, she has had to use up all her savings and sell all her valuables to keep up with the costs.
Recently, she even pleaded with relatives and the local community for donations so she could move her over to specialists at the Garrahan Hospital, in the capital city of Buenos Aires for further testing.
Veronica said: “Not a night goes by that she doesn’t complain of pain and get disoriented.
“There are days she sees me and cries because she doesn’t know who I am.
“The fever spikes are terrifying, she stiffens and trembles.
“She’s a very calm creature during the day because she’s very weak; at night, it’s a completely other person.
The mother added: “I’m desperate, I need a diagnosis.”
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