Baby Marno, fighting for his life from day one
Marno Greyvenstein was born with numerous birth defects, and ever since, he has not been able to catch a break when it comes to his health.
Marno Greyvenstein was born on 23 August 2016, and has since been in hospital theatres 10 times – six of the procedures being open heart surgeries.
Marno was born without a corpus callosum (the thick band of nerve fibres that connects the left and right hemispheres, allowing for communication between them) in his brain. However, this isn’t his biggest problem, as people can grow old without a corpus callosum and never know they don’t have one.
The fight for Marno’s life began immediately after he was born, when he had to spend 55 days in the neonatal intensive care unit at Life Fourways Hospital.
“It was a huge wake-up call. We’d had a normal baby previously, and I was able to take him home within a week of his birth,” said Marno’s mom, Mynette.
“But with Marno, this was obviously not the case, and I realised just how lucky we had been to have had a baby without any defects the first time.”
Marno was also born with severe micronathia, which means he has an under-developed bottom jaw and an insignificant chin, which led to issues with feeding.
To overcome this issue, he had a feeding tube inserted into his stomach in October 2016.
He has also had a pacemaker inserted in his chest, because he has a hole in the septum of his heart.
Marno went into cardiac arrest and flatlined during an operation in April 2017, which led to him having to be resuscitated by doctors for 45 minutes.
Marno was also born with three kidneys and only 11 ribs, one less than a normal person, but fortunately, these defects have no significant impact on his health.
He was also born deaf, although his father, Emile, believes that he does react to certain really loud noises.
“He won’t react to us speaking, but if a door slams, he does sometimes turn his head to see where the noise came from,” he said.
Marno currently has a nurse who works with him 24/7, doing numerous physiotherapy exercises in an effort to help him walk.
“He recently went for an operation to have cochlear implants inserted to help him hear, but the doctors were met with yet another challenge as they began operating – they found he had a severe middle ear infection and therefore could not continue with the implants,” Mynette said.
The doctors now have to wait a further six weeks before they can make another attempt at the implants.
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