By ROSALEEN MACBRAYNE
TAURANGA - Aisha Te Kani is a miracle woman.
Born prematurely by caesarean section on February 11, 1980, with a malformed heart outside her body, she was never expected to live.
But the warm, friendly young woman who left her teens behind her yesterday says simply: "I proved them all wrong.
"Twenty years have come and gone and I'm still here."
Her condition, ectopia cordis - the heart outside the ribcage - is extremely rare, and its causes are unknown. It is usually fatal in infancy.
Aisha is used to people staring at the pulsating lump beneath her upper clothing, and has often been asked if she has a kitten under her jersey.
"One lady in a clothes shop thought it was a ferret and was waiting for it to jump out," Aisha laughs.
Most accept the explanation that the movement is her beating heart, covered only by a skin graft for protection, and are interested rather than appalled.
"It is just the way I am," explains Aisha philosophically.
"I just have to handle it."
Aisha also has club feet and has to wear built-up shoes. This has limited her physical activity - and her mother, Moana, regards that as a blessing.
It reduces the strain on her heart and means she is less likely to knock the vulnerable organ or risk a potentially fatal fall, says Mrs Te Kani..
"The Lord has a way of evening people out. That is probably why she has funny feet."
Efforts were made to straighten Aisha's feet when she was 12 and 13, putting her in hospital for lengthy periods and in a wheelchair for a year.
"Then she had a spurt of growth and her feet went back to the way they were," her mother says.
A bright student who loved school and has since travelled to Australia and Thailand, Aisha does not feel she has missed out on anything, apart from sports.
"I have a full life and I have the Lord to thank for that," says the committed Christian, who is serving an internship at the Tauranga Worship Centre.
She expects to become a youth leader in her church, where she has already preached to the congregation.
"She got a standing ovation," says her proud mother. "I believe God is going to use her like that. We just support her in what she does.
"Every day is a blessing."
Aisha has three brothers who are "cool" and protect her.
She has accepted that her heart will remain outside her chest - "there is nowhere else for it to go."
Her unusual name is Indian.
"We called her that because, at the time, we were into Stevie Wonder and that was his daughter's name," says Mrs Te Kani.
Later, they found out how apt the choice was - Aisha means strength.
Although she did not walk until she was nearly 5, Aisha has rarely been sick. Over the years, her school attendance record was almost 100 per cent.
After completing seventh form, Aisha was accepted for a polytechnic journalism course at Rotorua.
But days before it was to begin, funding was withdrawn and the course folded.
She did a computer course instead, but likes to write poetry and stories in her diary.
She has a late night on Fridays helping run a downtown youth club, but otherwise sticks to a steady routine.
"I don't have to tell her what to do," says her mother.
"She looks after herself, physically and spiritually."
Aisha has not been back to Green Lane Hospital for a check since she was 10, but a paediatric cardiologist at the hospital, Dr Louise Calder, clearly remembers the "astonishing" attitude of acceptance and positivity the parents had passed to the girl.
Dr Calder says that not only was Aisha born without a breast bone, but her heart was malformed, with a hole between the two pumping chambers and a restricted artery leading to the lungs.
It is likely her abnormalities developed in the first six to eight weeks of pregnancy.
Years ago, says the cardiologist, doctors tried to put hearts back into the chest and it did not work.
"There is no hole in the chest cavity to fill up."
Meanwhile, Aisha "goes with the flow" and takes each day as it comes.
Birthday girl's 20-year miracle
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