A woman covered in ‘thousands’ of unusual growths all over her body underwent 60 hours of surgery to remove them while still awake because it was her ‘last hope’.
42-year-old Charmaine Sahadeo is covered in the life-threatening tumors all over her body.
They have taken over her face, mouth, scalp, legs, and even her genitals. The growths leaves her struggling to breathe, eat, talk and walk.
She has explained undergoing 60 hours of surgery, while completely conscious, to remove the tumors because it’s her ‘last hope’.
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Sahadeo suffers from NF-1 neurofibromatosis, after being diagnosed at 13, a rare one-of-a-kind genetic condition, where tumors grow along nerves in the body.
Symptoms of the condition include light or dark brown patches and non-cancerous tumors either underneath or on the surface of the skin. Other tell-tale signs involve freckles in unusual places and issues with the bones or nervous system.
The mom, from Chaguanas, Trinidad, struggles to breathe and eat and talk – especially with the tumor in her mouth, which she has taken to name Frank.
She finds it difficult to walk due to the large lump on her leg and can’t seem to get more than a few steps a time.
She contracted a doctor for help as the last resort. She met Los Angeles-based specialist, Dr Ryan Osborne, to see if he could do anything. The head and neck surgical oncologist and director of the Osborne Head and Neck Institute called her case ‘unusual’.
Her meeting with the specialist was documented in Take My Tumor on TLC.
Sahadeo said: “All the bumps are getting so big. I am afraid that if I cannot breathe properly, I will die. I might not even be able to reach out to someone in time to tell them.”
“This condition is very hard because people just like to stare and then have all kinds of negative things to say.”
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The 42-year-old has to wear baggy clothes, and finds it difficult to see due to double and blurry vision.
She first started to notice the tumors as a teenager when a couple of bumps on her face appeared but then they grew, and they somehow turned into thousands.
He said: “She has an unusual presentation of neurofibromatosis. It’s literally everywhere.
“I have personally never seen a patient clinically, and I have never seen one in a textbook, have it quite as bad as Charmaine. She appears to me to be a one-of-a-kind.”
Dr Osborne performed 24 surgeries on the mom over 10 weeks to remove them. But she had to be given local anaesthetic instead of being unconscious. In total, she had 60 hours of surgery while remaining awake for every single one.
And she’s over the moon about the results.
She said: “Life is 100 percent better for me. I love the way that I look now.
“Before, I couldn’t see anything at all – like my face – but now you can naturally see my eyes. You can see my nose. You can see my mouth. I can see properly and most important, I can breathe much better.”
“I feel beautiful. I really do feel beautiful now. I feel fantastic. I came back a different person,” the mom added. “I cannot expect anything better.”
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