Child star Millena Brandao dies at 11 due to 13 cardiac arrests
Millena Brandao, a child actress and model who appeared in the Netflix series Sintonia , died at age 11 on Friday.
The preteen died on Friday, May 2 after falling ill. However, her cause of death remains unknown, according to her parents Thays and Luiz Brandao.
Millena's mother, Thays, told Brazilian news outlet G1, per People , that her daughter started experiencing severe headaches, leg pain, drowsiness and a loss of appetite on April 24.
'She had a headache, but she could walk and talk,' Thays said. 'The doctor said it was dengue fever, but he didn't do any tests. He told us to take her back home and give her dipyrone.'
Thays said Millena's pain got worse and she couldn't work. They returned to the hospital only to be sent away again.
Millena fainted in her bathroom.
'She put her hand on her head and screamed in pain,' Thays recalled.
Finally, she was admitted to the hospital where she suffered cardiac arrest.
'Her lip turned purple. Then they resuscitated her and intubated her. From that day on, she never woke up again,' her mother told G1.
A CT scan revealed a 5cm mass in her brain.
'She got worse, with two to three cardiac arrests per day. She had 13 arrests in total. She had never had that before. There was one day when she had seven respiratory arrests. Sometimes they gave her massages and other times they gave her shocks (with a defibrillator),' her mother recalled.
Doctors ultimately declared Millena brain dead. – Advance Local Media/Tribune News Service
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