A week after her sixth birthday, Naomi suffered a cardiac arrest that turned our world upside down.
Shanghai, 5 February 2010, 11pm. Our two daughters Naomi and Sienna were asleep in their room. They shared a bunk bed and Naomi, who had just turned six, slept on top. My wife Paulina and I were in our bedroom where I was busy packing my suitcase as the next morning I would fly to São Paulo for work. Suddenly, Paulina heard Naomi produce a brief scream and asked me to go and see her. So I walked over to their room and found both girls sleeping. Tapping on Naomi's arm, I quietly asked if she had called us. No response. When I touched her leg I noticed her pyjamas were wet, which I thought was strange because it had been several years since she last wet her bed.
Then it flashed through my mind that she might have fainted. That weirdly was my first thought, so I tried to wake her up but got no response. I turned on the light and saw Naomi was shockingly pale.
I panicked. I tried to sit her up but she appeared completely lifeless and was not breathing. This is how we discovered that Naomi had suffered a cardiac arrest. By ambulance she was rushed to the resuscitation room of a nearby paediatric hospital. After multiple attempts, the doctors were able to get Naomi's heart beating again, albeit at a very low pace. She was transferred to the intensive care unit and disappeared behind closed doors.
It felt like an eternity before one of the doctors came out of the ICU and asked us to wait in a room where the head doctor would meet us to explain Naomi’s condition. When the head doctor finally came to see us, he told us Naomi was in very critical condition and had a dangerously low and irregular heartbeat as well as total organ failure. She lay in a coma attached to life support equipment. Judging from the acidity of the blood, they estimated that Naomi must have been practically without oxygen for about 25 minutes. We were told that if she were to survive, she would almost certainly remain in vegetative state for the rest of her life. Now that we knew this prognosis, they asked us if we wanted them to continue treating her. The mere thought of switching off the equipment and letting Naomi die sent shivers down our spine, so we told them to continue. We were not going to give up on her.
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