Charmaine Sahadeo was 43 when she realized that the greatest danger was running out of air and being unable to ask for help.
The woman, originally from Trinidad, has neurofibromatosis type 1, a rare genetic disease that causes benign tumors in nerve tissue. At first, there were just a couple on her face, but after she became pregnant with her son Osiris, her body was covered with thousands of bubble-shaped growths. One on her leg kept her from walking more than a few steps. Another in her mouth, which she nicknamed “Frank”, made it difficult for her to speak and eat. And several surrounded her nostrils until there was no opening left.
Doctors in Trinidad couldn’t help her, so she traveled to California, where surgeon Ryan Osborne told her he had never seen such a severe case, either in his practice or in textbooks. There was no accessible vein for anesthesia, so she endured 13 hours of surgery while awake, with only local anesthesia. Over 10 weeks, she underwent 24 operations, totaling about 60 hours of work. Today, she can breathe, put on makeup, and smile: “My life is one hundred percent better”.