Friday May 9

Performing with heart, soul & spine

Singer who suffers from muscular atrophy finds voice again after surgery

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

In the two years before her operation, the teenage Chinese singer Jiahuan Zhang could no longer perform.

But after surgery at Stanford's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in January, the 17-year-old suffering from spinal muscular atrophy regained her voice. And this weekend, Zhang will publicly sing in Palo Alto for the first time since the operation that straightened her spine and extended her life expectancy by 10 years.

"Before, even taking breaths was difficult," said Zhang at a Thursday press conference. "After the operation, the biggest gift to me is singing."

Zhang's singing career started almost as early as her struggle with spinal muscular atrophy. In a wheelchair almost since she was born, Zhang said she began to sing when she was 3 years old, mimicking her mother, Lijun Zhang. After winning an international competition in Germany, she went on to give more than 100 performances in 10 different countries.

At a concert last December in San Francisco, Zhang's mother announced she was looking for medical treatment in the United States for her daughter. A member of the audience put her in touch with Dr. Ching Wang, an associate professor of neurology and pediatrics at Stanford University Medical Center, who arranged for Jiahuan Zhang to undergo the six-hour scoliosis surgery at a discounted price.

"She was at the end of her rope," Wang said Thursday. Normally children diagnosed with type II spinal muscular atrophy do not live past their teenage years, he said.

Zhang's curving spine was compressing her lung capacity and weakening her heart. Surgeons in China had told Zhang's mother she was "inoperable." But when Wang consulted his colleagues, they agreed to operate on her, several donating their time.

The January operation was "a total success" and should extend Zhang's life for at least 10 more years, Wang said. Zhang now has two titanium rods supporting her spine.

Since the surgery, Zhang has had to re-teach her body to sing, she said.

"I need to continue to practice to find my voice," she said.

On Saturday, she will give her first concert since the surgery at the First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto, where Wang sings in the church choir. Designed to raise funds for her medical expenses, the concert organized by Sherlin Chan, conductor of the Star Valley Children's Choir, will feature Zhang singing solos or leading 15 songs, accompanied by both a children's and adult choir.

Harriet Howell, the church's concert coordinator and a singing instructor, said Zhang possesses "a very pure voice."

"She has a great ease, and you can tell she's had training," Howell said.

And Wang noted that Zhang's frequent exercising of her vocal muscles likely slowed her spine's deterioration.

"She would have probably had a much shorter life expectancy had she not been a singer," he said. As it is, the surgery came at a critical time, Wang said. "Any later and we would not have been able to save her," he said.



E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com.