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His blood was pumped out of his body, then back in to save his life after fall
LIKE a wounded war veteran, little Muhd Miftah bears several scars on his body, including one about 30cm long down the middle of his chest.
 The five-year-old wears the scars like medals. They are proof of how he survived a heart infection, stroke and a major heart operation when he was just three.
The resilient toddler recovered so quickly that he was able to walk on his own two weeks after being discharged from the hospital.
Today, Muhd Miftah, dubbed the “miracle boy” by his doctors, goes to school like his peers and runs and plays with his brothers, albeit with a slight limp.
His mother, Madam Husalilah Husin, 33, a nurse, wrote to The New Paper after reading about seven-year-old Joey H’ng, who suffers from the same condition as Muhd Miftah.
She wanted to share her son’s story to encourage Joey and her family.
Madam Husalilah said it started with her son falling at home while playing with his older brother on Aug 19, 2008.
She was at work when her maid called and told her that Muhd Miftah had fallen and hit his head. He was vomiting again and again.
Emergency
Madam Husalilah lives with her four sons, aged five to 13, and her maid in a three-room flat in the west.
 She told her maid to take him to the accident and emergency ward at the KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, where Madam Husulilah works as a nurse.
The next morning, a neurologist saw Muhd Miftah and found that the oxygen level in his blood was low.
The boy was transferred to a high-dependency ward, where he used an oxygen mask. But his oxygen level kept dropping.
A few hours later, he was transferred to the intensive care unit. He had to be sedated because he was struggling and pushing hospital staff away.
Madam Husalilah said tearfully: “He looked at me, and his last words to me were, ‘Mama, help me!’”
Doctors diagnosed him with myocarditis after doing an echo scan of his heart and told Madam Husalilah that he had only a 40 to 50 per cent chance of survival.
Like Joey, Muhd Miftah had to go through a procedure in which his blood was pumped out into a machine and then back into his body.
But there was a chance he would suffer a stroke or get an infection, doctors warned.
Madam Husalilah said: “I decided to let him go for the procedure, because I wanted to do something to save my son, rather than let him die without doing anything.”
Muhd Miftah was put on the machine for seven days.
A few days later, on Aug 23, she was told that her son’s heart was pumping well again.
But doctors told her there was a lesion in his heart, which looked as though something had bitten a chunk out of it.
The damage was so bad the lining covering his heart was only 2mm thick. The doctors said that if Muhd Miftah’s heart beat too quickly, it could rupture.
The next day, doctors noticed fluid had collected near his heart. Then they found that one of his heart valves had ruptured and he needed major heart surgery.
Madam Husalilah said: “I told them, ‘Just do whatever you need. As long as you can save his life, do what you need to do.’ ”
The doctors told her that when they opened up her son’s heart, it had turned yellow.
They sewed up the ruptured valve, but they could do nothing about the part of his heart that looked like it had been bitten off.
Coma
Through all this, Muhd Miftah was in induced coma. Madam Husalilah would talk to him and play songs from his favourite show, Barney.
She told him: “Please don’t go.”
She tickled him.
She prayed for a miracle.
On Sept 5, doctors took him off sedation. However, she noticed that he was not moving the left side of his body.
He also started drooling.
There was more bad news: Her son had suffered a stroke after blood clots entered the machine when his blood was being pumped out and got stuck in his brain.
Madam Husalilah said: “I received one piece of bad news after another. Why must it be my son? I gave birth to him as a normal child, I wanted him to live as a normal child instead of lying on the bed.”
Muhd Miftah, who used to run around the home, was reduced to a rag doll.
It was frustrating for both mother and son. Once she was so angry, she screamed at him during a physiotherapy session.
She said: “He knew that I wanted him to fight, so he moved his right hand.”
He started to drink milk on his own, instead of being fed through a tube in his nose, then progressed to eating blended porridge, and later normal porridge.
His condition improved so rapidly that he was discharged on Sept 15.
At home, Madam Husalilah and her maid massaged his legs, did physiotherapy for him every day and bathed him with water boiled with lemon grass.
He continued improving and was able to stand up one week after his discharge.
A few days later, he started taking his first steps. Two weeks later, he was walking normally.
His mother said: “Even the physiotherapist was surprised that he was walking. Everyone called him a miracle boy.
“He’s a fighter. He fought back, and now he’s running around. I feel pain when I see the scars, because I get reminded about the pain he had to go through. The scars are like medals for him.”
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