Balancing Act: 5-year-old Alabama girl is in Chicago for life-saving surgery. COVID-19 has complicated every step of the way
CHICAGO - Anne Marie Calligas was born fighting.
She arrived two months early, after a complicated pregnancy, and spent her first months of life battling congenital heart defects, hypertension, problems with her kidneys and bleeding in her young brain.
Her parents, Catherine and Louis Calligas, and her older sister, Isabel, grew quickly accustomed to the noises and smells and routines of hospitals. Even as Anne Marie aged past infancy and toddlerhood, a common cold could land her in the hospital with breathing problems.
In June, a gastrointestinal specialist diagnosed Anne Marie, now 5 years old, with a disease called Abernethy malformation. It's an extremely rare vascular anomaly whereby a portal vein is missing in the liver, allowing blood to go straight to Anne Marie's heart and lungs without the liver doing the important
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