Thirty years after her life was saved as a result of a detoured flight, Baby Naidoo, as she was dubbed by the media back in 1991, finally talks about the experience that made her a “miracle baby”.
Sashika Naidoo, a qualified chartered accountant, who turned 30 years old on May 11, was born at Provincial Hospital in Nelson Mandela Bay, with her oesophagus disconnected from her windpipe.
As she casually puts it, when the doctor smacked her bottom right after birth, she didn’t cry.
Baby Naidoo immediately needed emergency surgery at Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town, but there were no available flights from Nelson Mandela Bay to Cape Town on that day.
Luckily for this baby, her GP, Dr Nicolaas Koch, who remains her doctor until this day, thought outside the box in an attempt to get his tiny patient the help she needed as soon as possible.
“Dr Koch contacted SAA’s operating staff in Johannesburg and when they said that there were no available flights at that time, they then managed to re-route a flight travelling from Durban to Cape Town to make a short left and pick me up in Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha).
“There I was, just a few hours old, travelling on my first plane trip out of the city to The Mother City, and forget first class, I was in a warm, comfortable incubator that they had organised, with a nurse as my travel buddy,” Naidoo explained.
“Once in Cape Town, I was taken to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital to undergo an operation whereby they stretched my oesophagus and joined it to my windpipe,” she said.
The cause of her birth complications was unknown since her mother had carried her full-term and no abnormalities could be picked up at any antenatal checkups. She was later diagnosed with Vater syndrome by a specialist.
There are many variations of this condition but it can be described as a group of birth defects that often happen together.
In conjunction with her oesophagus and windpipe having been disconnected at birth, Naidoo also has a physical structure that favours the left side of her body.
“I am fairly short in height (due to genes). The right arm is shorter than the left and I do not have a working thumb on the left hand. It’s there, just not naturally connected to the rest of my hand to allow it to function or to allow me to move it on my own. It even still looks like a baby’s finger. My right hand does not have a thumb at all and the wrist bones did not come with all the parts as I can only move my wrist forwards and not backwards,” she said.
“I think I probably looked more disabled than I really was as we know in today’s media-driven society, anything skewed even one degree out of proportion, you’re termed as having a deformity.
“My parents didn’t know what all of this would mean for me growing up. They were a working-class family but asked God to show them the way.
They watched me crawl using the back of my hands and took me to occupational therapy for a few sessions to obtain an analysis of what special needs I would require.
“I went to a normal play school, primary and high school and apart from the normal gapes and comments from kids which were natural as at that age we’re not conditioned to accept what we have never seen before, everything was pretty much okay. I took up studies at NMU and Unisa and later on qualified as a CA (SA).”
Naidoo said that she never wanted people to know her story and even became shy when her parents would tell others.
Making a cross on a form next to the word “disability” remained a sensitive issue and she still hates having pictures taken.
“Sometimes I question why God went through all that trouble 30 years ago and I’m still trying to find the purpose He has for me. I try my best to pay it forward whenever I have the opportunity to do so, it simply makes you feel like you made a difference in the world for those few minutes. So many people paid it forward 30 years ago just to save the life of a little baby they never even knew.
“As I [reached] my 30th birthday, a time of reflection in one’s life and as a person who doesn’t like to share much about her life, I thought that I would share a little bit of my story and also just to remind myself of how grateful I should be for every breath I take.
“It’s strange how life can make you forget how lucky you actually are in life.”
Naidoo added that although it may be 30 years late, she would like to thank everyone who made that flight possible for her to receive the needed surgery. This includes the passengers that arrived home late, SAA staff, Dr Koch and all other medical staff involved.
