March 01, 2004

» The girl with no pain

Gabby Gingras has a disease so rare she's the only person her parents and doctors can find in the U.S. suffering from it. Like any other three-year-old, Gabby takes her share of slips and falls. Her reaction to each is predictable ? at least for her family.

For no matter how hard Gabby hits the ground, she will not shed a single tear. Hard as it is to fathom Gabby Gingras feels no pain. There is no cure, nor will she outgrow it.

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So often we think of pain in a negative way. But it is pain, that protects us.

Because Gabby feels no pain, she no longer has any teeth.

"Didn't hurt her at all getting a tooth ripped out," Steve Gingras says.

The teeth she didn't break off while biting toys were removed by an oral surgeon after Gabby chewed up her mouth and tongue so badly she had to be hospitalized.

"Pain is the protective mechanism, and she doesn't have that," Dr. Smith says.

Gabby didn't have pain to save her eyes either. She scratched them so severely, that at one point doctors sewed them shut to keep her fingers out. But, the damage was already done.

Last week Gabby's family was at Fairview University Medical Center to discuss the removal of her left eye, now swollen and blind from glaucoma brought on by the scratching.

The vision in Gabby's scratched right eye, her good eye, has been measured at 20-300.