After long fight, girl dies of rare disease

TAMPA -- Eleven-year-old Laci Roller, the girl who contracted a rare and fatal disorder from a measles infection, died Friday (April 19, 2002) at home.

Friends and family members had prayed for a miracle after she was diagnosed with the disease last summer. Her mother, Connie Smith, agreed to give her experimental drugs from Japan to slow the virus and reduce the brain swelling to extend the girl's life.

But Laci's fight against the disease, so rare it infects fewer than one out of a million people in the United States, ended Friday night.

"We did the best we could," Smith said. "We knew this was coming but we thought we had a little more time. She has gone to heaven now."

Laci was a healthy fifth-grader at Clair Mel Elementary School until last spring, when she started struggling with even the simplest work and suffered unexplainable seizures.

Several months went by before doctors at Miami Children's Hospital diagnosed her with subacute sclerosing pan encephalitis, or SSPE, a slow-moving viral infection of the central nervous system that causes swelling of the brain.

The disorder is caused by the measles infection. It is unclear whether Laci got the disease from the vaccine, as her mother believes, or from contracting measles between booster shots, as the vaccine manufacturer suggests.

Smith, who has hired an attorney, said she was told by doctors that Laci's body had failed to develop the antibodies to fight the live virus inoculations that she received as a toddler and again at 5.

Since shortly after her birthday last July, Laci had been unable to eat, talk, walk or roll over, spending most of her time in a hospital bed in her family's living room.

Before her daughter became ill, Smith said, her only child adored going to school, playing Barbies with friends and singing along to Britney Spears and 'N Sync. She said she wishes she had videotaped her daughter before the illness set in.

"I'd give about a million dollars to hear her talk, hear her laugh," Smith said last year. "It makes me nuts when people don't appreciate their kids and don't take care of their kids. I guess it goes back to what they say, live every day like it's the last."

Survivors include her mother and stepfather, Connie and Larry Smith; father, Christopher Roller of St. Petersburg; grandmothers Jeannie Wise of Lantana and Dora Roller of Largo; aunt Tanya Taylor and cousins Dustin and Chelsea Taylor, all of Lantana.

A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday at Serenity Meadows Memorial Park, 6919 Providence Road in Riverview.

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