Charlestown Girl Fighting for Her Life

Rhana Fleming, a 12-year-old from Charlestown attending Chariho Middle School, was suddenly paralyzed last month and doctors are still trying to figure out why.

Johnson Nordlinger, a Montauk resident and the assistant to East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, received a call in the middle of the night on Dec. 15: Her 12-year-old goddaughter Rhana Fleming was in the intensive care unit in a Rhode Island hospital. Before she fell ill that day, Rhana was perfectly healthy; in fact, she is a competing gymnast, a Charlestown native and a student at Chariho Middle School. "She woke up fine, made cookies, went to the gym and started her workout," Nordlinger said. "No one in medical history has gone from totally fine to paralyzed in six hours without blunt-force trauma." During her warm-ups, she complained of feeling her arms grow heavy, according to a narrative her parents wrote on Rhana's Journey…

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