WHEN TWIN GIRLS were born to Ken and Gwenny Lyons in Hong Kong, they saw their little arrivals as a double blessing, to be followed by all the milestones, triumphs and setbacks that await every new parent. But it is only now, almost six years later, that they feel confident enough to picture Gianina and Katerina as young women and imagine what they may do with their lives.
Since the girls were tiny, they have been plagued by a series of unexplained health problems. Test after test failed to pinpoint the problem. They were often too sick to play in their Hong Kong Island home, and even when they were well they were so weak that a family day trip left them exhausted. Desperate to relieve their daughters' pain, if not find a cure for their mysterious condition, the Lyons turned to a local herbalist. Now Ken, a New Yorker who owns an exporting business, has become an unlikely advocate of traditional Chinese medicine.
Gianina and Katerina were born on December 30, 1996, two months premature and each weighing only about 1.4kg, less than half the normal birth weight of a full-term baby. Both were found to have heart defects. At a year old, the girls were strong enough to undergo surgery to repair both a hole in the heart and a valve that was gradually closing up. But while these operations, performed in the United States, probably saved the twins' lives, their parents believe it may also have triggered the years of sickness.
Regular unexplained screaming began a year after the surgery, and although the twins were clearly in pain, visits to doctors drew a blank as to the cause. As toddlers, they began pointing to their heads as they screamed, then later complained of terrible headaches. 'They had all kinds of tests,' their father recalls. 'The people at the hospital knew them because we were there so often, but they couldn't find any cause. There were no allergies and nothing unusual showed up in the brain scans.'
Although the first two episodes were about nine months apart, they grew more frequent and more severe until, by the age of four, each twin was having an episode about once a month. Involuntary twitching, which doctors thought might be a precursor to epilepsy, also started. 'The migraine headaches were horrible,' Lyons recalls. 'When you saw them clutching their heads in pain and vomiting, it was heartbreaking. It's very difficult as parents. If you haven't had sick kids, you can't understand it. We couldn't see past five years, we thought it was that serious.'
Even when the girls were not in pain, they were generally sickly and subdued, suffering near-constant sniffles, colds and fever. The pictures they drew were done in black, showing people with dark eyes, no mouths and fuzzy hands, and when they were old enough to start pre-school they missed about half of their lessons because of illness. 'The only thing we could get to help them was pain killers, and the pain killers were so strong they turned them into zombies,' Lyons says. 'Katerina had epilepsy drugs.'
Lyons says the family tried to take advantage of the times both girls were well. 'We tried to keep them quite active, and we'd do things like go to Ocean Park, but half way through it we'd have to carry them, they'd be so tired.'
