Family had tried, and failed, to get help in SA
Laston Kwinika will again have to learn to eat
Talent Gore
A TEAM of surgeons at Parirenyatwa Hospital have performed a major operation on a Beitbridge man who had lived with a tumour in his mouth for 17 years.
Laston Kwinika, the patient, will now have to start, again, to learn how to articulate some words, how to eat and he has to select what he eats.
The tumour grew over time and, despite looking for assistance from different hospitals and even in South Africa, Kwinika could not get the help he needed.
After his story was published in The Herald, Zimpapers launched a campaign to mobilise funds for Kwinika and well-wishers came on board to help him.
Last week, he underwent a four-hour operation by a surgical team led by Prof Midion Chidzonga and Mr Wayne Manana.
In an interview yesterday at Parirenyatwa Hospital, Kwinika’s wife, Milliet Ndou, said she was grateful for the help that her family received as they had all lost hope.
Ndou narrated how the tumour came about and how they went to South African hospitals looking for help.
“This problem began in 2007, it started as a small pimple on the gums and we thought it was a boil. We went to the clinic on two occasions and we were referred to Beitbridge Hospital, there we were told to buy medication but it did not help.”
She added:
“In 2015, the tumour was still growing.
“By last year the tumour had started to bleed and pus was also coming out of it. The bleeding became so bad that he would become weak and we had to have a nurse come and give him intravenous fluids.
“In June it became worse and we went back to Beitbridge Hospital but they referred us to Bulawayo. I only had R1500 after selling one of our donkeys but this money could not take us to Bulawayo.
“The family and my church put together some money, which we used to travel to Bulawayo, but we got no joy there as the doctors said they could not assist us and referred us to Parirenyatwa.”
Ndou said by that time, they had sold all the cows and had started to sell the donkeys as well but the money was still not enough.
“Last month I thought that I could not just sit and wait for the worst. I took a picture of my husband and went to Thupeyo Muleya at The Herald and he did our story and also took us to the local community radio station.
“That is when we started to get assistance.
“Well-wishers came forth and raised money for us to get to Parirenyatwa,” she said.
Dr Tapiwa Nyakudya, a specialist trainee in oral and maxillofacial surgery who was part of the surgical team, said the tumour was not cancerous.
“Our patient came in with a huge lower jaw mass which was suspected to be what we call an ameloblastoma, this is a slow growing tumour that grows painlessly overtime, then it invades the local tissue, that is the tissue that it is related to,” he said.
“It had destroyed most of his jaw, especially the teeth-bearing area, so we went for surgery to preserve that part of the jaw that had been affected by this tumour which unfortunately included all the part that had his lower teeth.
“Kwinika has to learn again how to articulate some words, how to eat and he has to select what he will eat for now while we wait to rehabilitate his mouth in terms of fabricating artificial teaching but we need to have grafted that defect.
“Once someone loses such a huge part of his mandible, the issue is on how we rehabilitate him, we had to use a temporal plate to cover the defect that was left after we removed the tumor.”
Dr Nyakudya said that they are hoping that they will go back to theatre in six months’ time to use bone graft and they are planning to take part of the bones in his legs so that they can fashion a mandible lower jaw.
He said one of the major challenges they have is that people seek treatment for such cases when it’s too late.
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Original post on H Metro