Breelyn was just 2 days old when someone, overflowing with excitement to meet her, kissed her on the mouth.
There was no way to know: that person had a cold sore. Two weeks later, the seizures began. The virus had reached her cerebrospinal fluid and was attacking her brain, which at that age had no defenses to stop it. Doctors diagnosed herpes simplex encephalitis, a disease so rare that it affects one in every 500.000 people a year. According to her mother, 60% of the left side of her brain was damaged, and 10% of the right side was too.
Today, Breelyn is 8 years old and is doing better than the doctors expected, although she is not expected to reach adulthood. Even so, her mother holds no grudge: “It was an accident, and they didn’t do it on purpose”, she says of the person who kissed her.