Seven-year-old Tia McCarthy is physically unable to eat. This is a conundrum that continues to plague the medical profession despite best efforts to rectify it. The riveting and moving documentary “The Girl Who Never Eats” details her struggles as she embarks on a groundbreaking research project as her last hope.
Tia was born 12 weeks premature with a rare condition in which the esophagus does not connect to the stomach. She underwent a lengthy and complex operation when she was four months old, during which her abdomen was lifted and reattached to the center of her chest. Usually, children who have this surgery are able to return to normal eating habits after 4 weeks. Not so with Tia, and doctors are baffled as to why. Instead of solid food, the little girl was fed daily liquid nutrients injected directly into her abdomen.
Tia is an ordinary, precocious girl who otherwise seems perfectly healthy, who accepts her condition because she knows nothing. However, her mother is desperate to find the answers behind Tia’s mysterious anomalies and a solution that could improve her daughter’s quality of life. She told the media her daughter’s story in the hope that someone in the world could offer a potential cure.
Your prayers have been answered in the form of a 3 week study course in Austria which prides itself on a 100% success rate. The film follows Tia and her mother as they head to a clinic and undergo a controversial treatment that includes a period of controlled starvation. The course also places equal emphasis on the psychological aspects of illness. Will they wean Tia off the feeding tube and teach her to eat solids in a few weeks? The process is often exhausting, but it leads to a series of revelations that could change her life forever.
The medical mystery at the heart of “The Girl Who Never Eaten” is undoubtedly intriguing, but it’s the film’s emotional heartbeat that proves to be most rewarding.
The documentary was shot in 2006, and a lot has happened since then. Read the latest from Tia McCarthy.
Directed by: Dominick French
