Nine Year Old Girl Suffocated By Growth On Face Saved By UK Surgeons

Little Triny Amuhirwe, from Uganda, now finally has her face back thanks to the work of UK charity Facing The World and the team of medics who operated on her for free.

Her mum Sarah praised the amazing group of people who saved her daughter.

She said: "Thanks so much to the surgeons and the charity for saving Triny's life, because Triny would have died if they had not worked on her." 

Sarah first noticed a growth on the right side of Triny's face when she was just four years old.

She said: "I thought it would disappear but it kept on growing, then I went to the hospital."

But at the hospital medics simply said they needed to wait and see what happened. Gradually the growth began to get bigger and bigger, and when Triny was seven, Sarah took her back to hospital and the doctors decided it was time to operate. 

At first it appeared the surgery had been a huge success, but in a tragic twist for Triny the growth was back within just two weeks. A second op also failed to work, and Triny's growth returned even bigger than ever.

Sarah revealed: "It had grown bigger than it was the first time... It took over her whole face."

Meanwhile Triny, whose condition is called fibrous dysplasia, was in incredible pain, suffering from headaches, struggling to eat and breathe and she soon became unable to see out of her right eye. To make things worse she was asked to leave school, because her teachers couldn't deal with her situation.

Sarah said: "The staff said they could not bear the situation, so Triny had to sit back home and not go to school." But Triny's luck finally changed when one of the family's neighbours met an American nurse who was working in Uganda and told her about Triny.

The nurse put the Amuhirwes in touch with Facing The World, who raised the funds to bring Triny to Britain for surgery. Last November Triny arrived in London, where she underwent 15 hours of surgery to remove the growth. And this time doctors believe they will have been successful as they removed more of the growth than ever before.

Asked what the outcome for Triny might have been had she not had the op, one of her surgeons Jonathan Collier , simply said: "Let's not go there."

Source: The Sun UK