For 24 long years, Badri Alam could not bear to see people staring at his face. But last week, his despair came to an end after a marathon 12-hour facial reconstruction surgery finally re-formed a face that had been disfigured by a rare disorder.
Alam had been hit by Parry-Romberg Syndrome, also called “progressive hemifacial atrophy”, a rare disorder that affects one in a hundred thousand people, at the age of seven. It’s an incurable disorder that causes the ageing or deterioration of one half of the face while the other half remains normal. Reconstructive surgery is the only option, and even that only after the degeneration stops progression naturally, says Prof. Paul C. Salins, medical director at the Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Institute and Narayana Hrudayalaya Multi-Specialty Hospital, who operated upon him.
“I feel so blessed suddenly. I am happy to be able to live and enjoy a normal life”, Alam, 31, told this newspaper, after Prof. Paul and his team managed to reconstruct his face using bones from the skull and hips, with only the normal half of the face as a reference to what he should look like post-surgery.
“We need to give finishing touches next week”, the doctor said.
Following Alam’s case, the hospital has had two more people suffering from the disorder come in — a 10-year-old girl from Gulbarga and a 40-year-old woman from West Bengal. While the latter will be operated upon soon, the girl from Gulbarga will have to wait until the degeneration halts.