A Los Angeles surgeon changed the life of a mother of two when he removed thousands of agonizing tumors from her body during more than 60 hours of painstaking surgery.
Dr. Ryan Osborne, who felt compelled to take on this “unique case” after learning of her desperate situation, performed a total of 24 operations on patient Charmaine Sahadeo over 10 weeks.
Ms Sahadeo, a mother of two from Trinidad, suffers from the rare disease neurofibromatosis NF-1, which caused growths on her scalp, mouth, entire face, arms, legs, buttocks, breasts and genitals. region.
He had already undergone two surgeries in his home country to help with the debilitating disorder, but decided he needed to seek more help abroad and launched a fundraiser in hopes of traveling to the United States.
After years of waiting, she finally found Dr. Osborne, an award-winning head and neck surgeon who was determined to help her overcome what is considered one of the most severe cases of neurofibromatosis in the world.
Dr Ryan Osborne said he felt compelled to take on this “unique case” after learning of the patient’s desperate situation.
Dr. Osborne speaks with tumor patient Charmaine Sahadeo while evaluating her condition on the TLC show Take My Tumor.
Dr. Osborne appeared on TLC’s Take My Tumor, helping Ms. Sahadeo start a new life free of the tumors she has been forced to live with for so many years.
Speaking to his patient on the show, Dr Osborne told him that due to the severity of his neurofibromatosis, he was “trespassing into dangerous territory” but that intervention was “urgent”.
He explained that removing the thousands of tumors would be a long and complicated process, requiring multiple surgeries over more than two months.
With each tumor removed, he said, pieces of skin would also need to be removed, each time increasing the risk of infection. This meant that the procedures had to be carried out in several sessions.
How quickly they would work also depended on how much pain Mrs. Sahadeo could tolerate.
Dr Osborne said: “You won’t feel anything during the surgery.” It’s when you wake up. If I took all this away from you, it would be like someone skinning you alive and couldn’t give you enough painkillers to keep you comfortable.
Despite the pain, Mrs. Sahadeo was determined to undergo surgery.
Dr Osborne told his patient: ‘I’ve never done this before…. Let’s do this together, step by step.
“All I can tell you is that I will be here with you all the time and whatever happens we will figure it out.”
Dr. Osborne with some of his colleagues. He is director of Osborne Head and Neck Surgery.
Ms. Sahadeo said she feels 98 percent better than before the procedures and smiles more now.
But in preparing for surgery, Ms. Sahadeo’s medical team hit a major hurdle: Her tumors covered much of her body, they couldn’t find a vein to infuse her with anesthesia, which meant they couldn’t sedate her to operate. .
Opting to administer local anesthesia, numbing only the affected area rather than sedation, Ms. Sahadeo underwent a 13-hour surgery fully awake.
Dr. Osborne was able to remove dozens of tumors, including several large ones in his face and ‘Frank’ in his mouth, as well as the extremely large tumor in his leg.
Over the next 10 weeks, he operated on Ms Sahadeo 24 times, for a total of 60 hours.
Four weeks after her last surgery, back in Trinidad, Mrs Sahadeo said: “Life is 100 per cent better for me.”
Dr. Osborne is dedicated to changing lives and documents his incredible work on YouTube and social media.
‘When most doctors see a patient and it’s a complex situation, they simply see a high risk. I see the opposite of that, which is high impact,’ he stated on his Instagram.
‘It’s an opportunity for me to have a big impact on that patient’s life. I went into medicine to help people.
“Once I make a human connection with a patient, I have no choice: I’m going to take the case.”
The father-of-two is director of head and neck surgery at Osborne and founded a charity that works to provide free ENT surgical care to people around the world.
He describes himself as someone who is “determined to make a difference in the world”, this being the reason he trained to be a head and neck surgeon.
The photo on the left shows Charmaine Sahadeo before her surgeries and the right shows her after more than 60 hours of operations.
In addition to running his private medical practice, he leads annual medical and impact missions around the world with his charity Dr. Osborne Head and Neck Foundation.
He is a doctor, he says, “but above all he is a man of the people, a visionary and a person who never gives up on his dreams.”
He says he has dedicated his adult life to “serving others and helping those around him grow.”
In addition to running his private medical practice, heHe leads annual medical and impact missions around the world with his charity, the Dr. Osborne Head and Neck Foundation.
It sees him and other specialists visit countries in Africa and South and Central America, helping those in need of life-changing surgeries.