Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has canceled several campaign appearances early this week so that he can spend time with his ill daughter, who was unexpectedly hospitalized on Friday.
The 3-year-old girl, Isabella Maria Santorum, or "Bella," has rare genetic disorder called Trisomy 18 that claims the lives of 90 percent of newborns diagnosed with the condition within their first year. Santorum speaks often of Bella on the campaign trail in Election 2012.
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"Senator Santorum will not hold any campaign-related events on Monday so that he and Karen can remain in the hospital with their daughter Bella," said the statement, which was issued by Hogan Gidley, Mr. Santorum's campaign spokesman. "The entire Santorum family is incredibly grateful for the outpouring of prayers and support," the statement said.
At a Republican presidential debate alongside Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, Santorum said doctors predicted Bella would perish within days of her birth in 2008. "They told us she had a fatal condition and was going to die," Santorum said.
The former U.S. senator said the diagnosis infuriated him and his wife of more than two decades, Karen.
"It angered us to hear that because she was our daughter like every other one of our children and we were not going to let her go. Now we understand that her life is going to be different than our other children. But we felt that we owed her the opportunity, a chance, to do as well as she could," Santorum said in a campaign commercial.
The campaign did not disclose the reason for the girl's hospitalization last week.
Santorum's temporary departure from the campaign trail came as he was engaged in a battle to win his home state of Pennsylvania. Statewide polls showed the race for the 72 delegates there neck-and-neck between Santorum and Romney.
Trisomy 18 occurs in about one in every 3,000 live births, according to the Trisomy 18 Foundation. Only 5 percent to 10 percent of infants diagnosed with Trisomy 18 survive beyond their first year of life, according to the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Santorum has described his daughter's survival as being a miracle. Bella has indeed defied the odds.
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