A teen in Quebec's Beauce region who has a rare illness will be back in hospital Thursday or Friday for surgery, after a judge ruled her mother was negligent for trying to treat her condition with natural remedies.

The 13-year-old, the youngest of four children, has a genetic disease that interferes with her kidneys and breathing. Two of her brothers also have the condition, which has only been documented 39 times in the past 50 years.

She was taken from her mother by a youth court judge in February because her mother had placed her on a regime of wheat-grass juice and raw foods and was withholding a medication. Judge Judith Landry found that the mother had watched her daughter's health deteriorate over a period of months and ruled that custody be temporarily transferred to the teen's father.

The 41-year-old mother said she stopped giving her daughter a medication because she wanted her to follow a course of "natural treatment" begun at a centre in Florida in the fall of 2007.

"I didn't refuse all medication that the doctor wanted to give to her," said the mother, who can't be named because it might identify the daughter. "I refused the one that I knew wasn't good for her."

The mother said she wanted three months to give the alternative therapy a chance to cure her daughter, whose disease renders her unable to properly absorb and process water.

But by the time the girl was taken to hospital in January, her stomach was so full of liquid, doctors said she looked pregnant with triplets. She had stopped going to school out of embarrassment.

The teen, from St. Gédéon de Beauce, about 130 kilometres southeast of Quebec City, will undergo surgery Thursday or Friday and spend the next six months with her father.