FOCUS
The Litmus Test of
Parenthood
Litmus, the latest hit A ROCKY START
album of popular local The joy of pregnancy turned into
indie band The Great anxiety when Magdelene started
bleeding heavily seven weeks
Spy Experiment, is a into pregnancy. At 32 weeks, she
melodic unravelling of stopped feeling Kyra’s kicks. Ten
its members’ darker days into hospital supervision,
hours. For keyboardist Kyra’s heartbeat flat-lined.
Magdelene was hurriedly ushered
Magdelene Han and into undergoing an emergency
bassist Khairyl Hashim, Caesarean birth, where the
the romantically doctors worked their magic.
intertwined half of the Amidst the chaos, Kyra was
miraculously revived.
band, it soulfully echoes
of the dark hours after TATTOOED AT BIRTH
giving birth to their baby The triumph of Kyra’s birth was
girl Kyra. This is their short-lived.
turbulent journey. She was prematurely born with a
lopsided head, her delicate skin
tattooed with a port wine stain indications that something was not
quite right. After a series of medical
examinations, Kyra was found to
have pressure in her brain and
Never, ever give up
hope. And after all
that’s done, don’t
forget to YOLO!
10
Family & Life • Sep 2014
was tested for hemihypertrophy,
a condition in which physical
asymmetry is caused by extensive
cell-growth on one side of the body.
A friend and dermatologist who
had seen Kyra’s red birthmark
pointed out that Kyra exhibited a
few symptoms of MacrocephalyCapillary Malformation (M-CM), a
rare disease that has only struck
150 patients in the world. In Asia,
Kyra was the only one to suffer from
it; she was diagnosed at eightmonths-old.
The new parents were dealt their
next blow when Kyra emerged
motionless from a surgery that was
meant to lessen the pressure in her
brain. “For two whole days, Kyra
didn’t move at all when she first
came out,” recalls Magdelene. “The
doctor said that it might be due to
the general anaesthesia but we kept
waiting and she still didn’t move.”
By
Jade Tan
Apparently, the first operation had
caused major internal bleeding,
resulting in a second operation to
drain the blood and a third to include
a shunt (a thin tube that drains excess
fluid from the brain to another part of
the body). Although the hardy sixmonth-old pulled through the three
surgeries, done over a span of just
10 days, she was left with partially
impaired psychomotor skills.
During this whole period, Kyra was
warded in the ICU. The perseverant
couple were not allowed to stay in
the unit overnight, so they would
come in the morning at 8 am and
only make the long trek home 14
hours later at 10 at night. Then, the
process would repeat again the next
day. After a month, when they had
picked up the skill – and the nerve
– to insert a feeding tube through
their daughter’s nose, the family was
eventually allowed to return to living
their lives at home.