Getting Stronger By The Day

Little Ruveshni has a new chance at life thanks to a cutting-edge cardiac procedure

- Kim Abrahams

THE little girl is fast asleep on the sofa, dressed in pink pyjamas and wrapped snugly in a blanket. She’s blissfully unaware of how close she came to losing her life – and to the fact she’s now regarded as a medical marvel.

Ruveshni Lewis is Africa’s first recipient of a cutting­edge cardiac intervention that has given her the best chance of living a healthy, active life. The procedure, performed recently at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital in Cape Town, made headlines far and wide – but as far as the six­year­old is concerned, all that matters is that doctors “fixed” her heart.

“She’d ask the doctors why they kept hurting her,” mom, Jestine (33) says. “When they explained they were trying to make her heart as normal as other kids’ she got very excited.”

Mother and daughter recently returned home to George in the Western Cape after a two­and­a­half­month stint in the Red Cross Hospital where Ruveshni underwent the life­altering surgery.

Ruveshni is no stranger to hospitals – she’s been in and out of the most of her young life after being born with only one heart ventricle, which meant her heart couldn’t pump enough blood to her lungs.

Now doctors are hopeful she won’t have to see another hospital ward again for a long time. An atrial flow regulator (AFR) was implanted in her heart, which will ensure adequate blood flow throughout her body (see box).

Ruveshni, who’s in Grade R, still has to take a cocktail of drugs to treat high blood pressure and prevent congestive heart failure and fluid build-up, as well as the blood thinner Warfarin to prevent clots forming.

But despite all this, she’s getting stronger by the day and Jestine often has to remind her daughter to take it easy.