Former Child Star Dead at 11 After Suffering 13 Heart Attacks
A Brazilian child star died tragically last week at age 11 after suffering 13 cardiac arrests, per multiple reports.
Child actress Millena Brandão passed away on May 2 at Granjaú General Hospital in São Paulo, Brazil after being rushed to the facility last Wednesday. According to the Daily Mail, Brandão, who appeared in Netflix's "Sintonia," began feeling ill on April 24, experiencing pain in her leg, drowsiness, loss of appetite and fainting.
According to Brazilian news outlet G1, doctors originally thought the girl was suffering from dengue fever, but additional tests ruled that out. Doctors later thought she had a brain tumor, but were unable to confirm so with testing.
As of Monday, no cause of death has been provided.
'The doctors still haven't said what really happened to my daughter and what killed her. It's a question mark,' said Thays Brandão, the pre-teen's mother.
After originally visiting an urgent care center and two São Paulo state-run hospitals, Millena was taken to Granjaú General Hospital on April 29 and intubated after her first cardiac arrest.
'She got worse, with two to three cardiac arrests per day. She had 13 arrests in total. She had never had that before,' Thays Brandão said. 'There was one day when she had seven respiratory arrests. Sometimes they gave her massages and other times they gave her shocks [with a device called a defibrillator]."
Thays told G1 that when she and her husband realized their daughter had not woken up and was not going to improve, they made the devastating decision to let her go.
'I said that if we were to let her little heart stop beating on its own, we would suffer more, and so would she. And we asked for the machines to be turned off,' Thays said.
The Brazilian municipal and state health departments are reportedly investigating young Millena's death.
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