When Andrea was just 40 days old, she and her family arrived in Boston. There, they met with Dr. Samuel Nurko, director of Boston Children’s Motility and Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders Center. “When we first met Dr. Nurko, we could tell he was a great human being,” says Maria. “He made us feel like we weren’t just in a hospital.”
But Andrea was in the hospital — and would stay there for three months. While Dr. Nurko never stopped giving her family hope that she would improve, he confessed years later that he had worried she wouldn’t make it through the week. Thanks to careful evaluation and round-the-clock care, she slowly began to improve.
Although Andrea’s parents had been told that she also had Hirschsprung’s disease, motility testing revealed that she did not. Instead, she had a host of other motility issues, including fast intestinal transit, which made it difficult for her to absorb nutrients and gain weight.