New Idea – March 19, 2018

(Chris Devlin) #1

W


alking
down the
street used
to be an
ordeal
for 25-year-old Cody Holt.
‘I wasn’t famous, but there
weren’t many people in our
small town, who didn’t know
who I was,’ Cody tells New Idea.
That’s because the local
community had become
accustomed to following Cody’s
extraordinary journey.
When she was just a few
days old, she developed a rash
underneath her eye.
‘Within weeks, the rash
spread across the left side of my
face which left me misshapen
and disfigured,’ she explains.
‘At a time when you couldn’t
just google a diagnosis, my
parents were desperate to find
out what was going on.’
Local doctors didn’t know
what was causing the issue, but
fate stepped in one day when
Cody’s mum Theresa happened
to watch a TV show featuring
a little girl with a similar
condition. She rushed to find
a scrap of paper on which to
scribble down the details of
a surgeon who could help.
‘After an initial telephone
conversation with the doctor in
the USA, they began fundraising
and from then, I don’t think a
week went by when I wasn’t in
the local newspaper,’ Cody, from
Corby, UK, recalls.
‘The whole community
rallied behind us and within nine
months, my whole family were
able to fly to San Francisco for
me to begin treatment.’
DREAMS CA ME TRUEBy then, medics had


BATTLER’S


B IG DA Y


Cody’s face
became
misshapen
after she
developed
a rash as a
baby. The
cause was
found to be
a tumour.

ALL MY


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