Shai Winn can't eat, drink or even brush her teeth thanks to a rare condition affecting her throat. The 10-year-old was born weighing just 3lb and spent the first weeks of her life in a neonatal unit.
Once she was home her mum Lindsey, 41, became worried when the baby coughed every time she was breastfed. She eventually had to give up her job as a sales manager to care for Shai, who was constantly coming down with colds, chest infections and even pneumonia.
Doctors were baffled until they found a V-shaped pocket in the back of Shai's throat. When she was 18 months old it was confirmed to be a laryngeal cleft, a rare condition where the skin between the food pipe and air pipe hasn't closed properly leaving a hole.
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