Fighting for her life!

A 10-year-old Jupiter girl with the mind of a 3-month-old suffers paralyzing seizures that literally take her breath away.

Jessi van Antwerp, born in South Africa, was 11 weeks old and about to undergo surgery for a hernia when she was left in a Cape Town operating room without oxygen for 15 minutes, her parents said.

"It was a comedy of errors," her father, Henry van Antwerp, 43, recalled.

On Monday, two years after accepting a confidential legal settlement from the Cape Town hospital that they said inserted an adult anesthesia tube into Jessi's stomach, rather than her lungs, the golf facilities builder and wife, Marchel, were preparing to celebrate their first Independence Day as American citizens.

The native South African couple also recently published, "Bloody but Unbowed," Marchel van Antwerp's fictional account of their experiences with Jessi, who physicians said wouldn't live past the age of 2.

It's a situation that can "either push you apart or pull you together," Marchel van Antwerp, 40, said. "We are one."

For 10 years, she and Henry have watched Jessi die a little with each day's seizures. And the little girl's needs — a cool climate and shade, for instance — often take precedence over the outdoor-oriented desires of her sisters, Danica, 15, and Codi, 5.

Jessi is unable to walk or talk, and she has been in the care of Vitas Hospice for one year now. She and her family moved to the United States about one month after her 1996 hospital incident, when a wealthy Miami businessman friend offered to cover the cost of her medical needs — including surgery to accommodate a feeding tube, Henry van Antwerp said.

For the past five years, the van Antwerps have spent some $250,000 of their own money for Jessi's care. Anti-seizure medications — she takes four different variations daily — cost as much as $1,000 each per month, Marchel van Antwerp said.

Still, the little girl shakes excessively, or experiences a twitching of the face during sometimes silent convulsions that paralyze her heart and lungs. Her legs refuse to uncurl, her bone growth is stunted and her muscles, because they go unused, have weakened.

"We're fighting an uphill battle, but we're just going to continue doing what we're doing," Marchel van Antwerp said.

"Letting her go is not an option," Henry van Antwerp added.

Funds from the legal settlement helped the van Antwerps get out of debt and move out of a Boca Raton rental and into a modest Jupiter home of their own.

There, Jessi goes for weeks sleeping days instead of nights, and the bedroom she shares with her parents is decorated with all the life assistance machines of an intensive care unit. Marchel van Antwerp has learned to perform CPR, and she does so regularly. She and her family live each day with the possibility Jessi might die. And yet they consider the little girl a blessing who has changed them for the better.

Henry van Antwerp refers to Jessi as a "miracle," and, because she cannot sin or lose her innocence, as "God's best work." Her siblings, Danica and Codi, Marchel van Antwerp said, have learned "a compassion that's something you cannot teach them.

"So many people go through life complaining about stuff," Marchel van Antwerp said. "We used to take things for granted and sweat the small stuff. If you've seen the very bottom, which we have, you have a way of appreciating things more.

WHERE TO PURCHASE 'BLOODY BUT UNBOWED'
Marchel van Antwerp's book, "Bloody but Unbowed," is available for purchase at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com and www.walmart.com. For a few dollars more, signed copies can be purchased through the van Antwerps' Web site, www.bloodybutunbowed.com.