Little Tianna cannot cry for the reason that it could kill her. The toddler has a rare condition in which tears could prompt a fatal fit.
The toddler’s daily battle for life
The little one does not know how cruel fate has been on her. Her parents know though. And that is why they strive every day and do whatever it takes to ensure that she does not cry.
Tianna has had 10 episodes of what is termed as Reflex Anoxic Seizure (RAS), a vagally mediated cardiac arrest
producing cerebral ischemia. The RAS attack is normally provoked by pain or fright.
Whenever she has RAS, Tianna appears as if she is dead. Her skin turns white, her body becomes rigid, the heart beat stops and she stops breathing.
Diagnosed with the condition when she was merely 18-months-old, Tianna has survived 10 seizures since then. One of the seizures, the worst of them all, lasted as many as two hours.
The horrific fits
Her mother narrates the harrowing tale of the first fit. “I picked her up out of her high chair and put her on the floor and she cried for seconds and then she looked like she had died.”
“She went a deathly grey, her lips and around her eyes were blue and her eyes rolled back in her head. When she has the fits she stops breathing and looks dead because she stiffens up and her back arches… I thought she was dead,” said Ceri.
Her 30-year-old father then gave her artificial respiration by putting his mouth over her nose and mouth.
“After five or six blows she took a massive breath and came around crying her eyes out,” recalls Andy.
The doctors at the high dependency unit at Wrexham Maelor Hospital, where Tianna was taken, could not establish the exact cause of the fit.
Merely 15 days had passed when Tianna experienced a second seizure that left her out of breath and fighting for life for over two hours.
The diagnosis
It was at this point that RAS was diagnosed.
“When she has fits it's horrendous,” recalls Andy. “When she starts to cry we usually have to flick water in her face to bring her out of the shock,” states the aggrieved father.
“She is our little angel and this makes you appreciate her more. She is hyperactive, talkative, bubbly and very active. She's very well developed for her age,” states Andy of their little one.
Keeping their fingers crossed, hoping for the best and praying to Him that their daughter outgrows the condition is what her parents do, day in and day out.
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