[Blitzer:] Doctors in Arkansas are holding out hope for a 12-year-old girl infected by a brain-eating parasite. No one is known to have survived the infection in the past decade. She remains in critical condition in an Arkansas hospital. Elizabeth Cohen reports.
[Elizabeth Cohen, Cnn Senior Medical Correspondent:] When Kali Hardig arrived she was so exhausted she couldn't answer the questions.
[Traci Hardig, Kali's Mother: Diagnosed With Brain-eating Amoeba:] He asked me if Kali could be like a hypochondriac.
[Cohen:] But Kali's mom insists she's no drama queen. The doctor listened and ran tests that showed Kali had a rare and almost always deadly infection. Swimming around in her spinal fluid, this brain- eating amoeba. Her parents were told she might only have days to live.
[Hardig:] I hung on by my husband and asked him, what are we going to do. He would tell me that we're going to pray and help her fight. We're going to tell her to fight and she would be OK.
[Cohen:] To preserve brain tissue, her doctors induced a coma and cooled her body to 93 degrees. Doctors turned to the Centers for Disease Control for help. It has worked. There's no trace of the parasite in her spinal fluid.
[Dr. Sanjiv Pasala, Pediatric Intensive Care Physician, Arkansas Children's Hospital:] Day by day, she's showing improvement. We're all very optimistic.
[Cohen:] She remains in intensive care in critical condition.
[Pasala:] Killing the amoebas is one thing but managing brain swelling and the aftermath is the critical part of having her survive.
[Cohen:] If Kali does pull through, she'll beat the odds. Only one person in the U.S. has beat this in the past 50 years. Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, reporting
[Blitzer:] Let's hope she does. Facing numerous accusations of sexual assault, the San Diego mayor is asking the taxpayers to pick up the tab for his sexual harassment lawsuit. What the city council is saying about that. That's next.