2023-12-09 19:56:59
Saturday, December 9, 2023, 18:39 | Updated 6:56 p.m.
Comment
Copy link
X
Telegram
First he thought about cutting off his arms and feet, and then about taking his own life. Abul Bajandar was so desperate that he did not want to continue living. And it’s easy to understand why. This 35-year-old Bangladeshi man suffers from one of the few cases of epidermodysplasia verruciformis in the world, an extremely rare disease that covers the extremities with large warts.
Surgeon Samanta Lal Sen, with an x-ray of Bajandar’s hands. Zigor Aldama
When they grow, they make it impossible to use their hands, they make it difficult to walk, and they cause severe pain and constant infections that force them to live constantly consuming antibiotics. Furthermore, they acquire an appearance similar to that of wood, which is why Bajandar became known as ‘the tree man’.
His case went around the world in 2016, when a team of surgeons became interested in his case in the country’s capital, Dhaka, and decided to intervene to free him from what ended up being more than six kilos of warts. They achieved it after twenty operations that the press followed with as much surprise as they did, but the doctors were always aware that, due to their genetic nature, the warts could reappear. And they did it. After just a few months, the carcinomas returned. First with a manageable size for household scissors. Then not anymore.
a terrible life
When Bajandar received this journalist for the second time in the rudimentary house he occupies in a remote part of central Bangladesh, the warts had acquired a size even larger than they had in 2016. Last February, he could barely move and was dependent on entirely from his wife, Halima Khatun.
Before, Bajandar needed his wife to help him even when bathing or going to the toilet. Zigor Aldama
Unfortunately, she does not earn enough from her seamstress job to feed the family, so Bajandar even asked to have her limbs amputated. «There are people who live with dignity with multiple amputations thanks to the prostheses that exist. “I think that’s better than constantly suffering pain, but they always tell me no,” he said, leaving open the possibility of grabbing a machete and doing it himself.
Fortunately, shortly after this newspaper published a report in which Bajandar called for a foreign medical center to analyze his case, the team led by surgeon Samanta Lal Sen at the Dhaka University Hospital called him to find a different solution. . And, after analyzing the possibilities available to him, he decided to start a new series of five interventions.
Bajandar in February 2023 and now. Zigor Aldama
Several months later, Bajandar has regained his smile and has been able to hug his daughters again. She has lost some fingers and parts of others, but she is happy. And no wonder: she has returned home and has regained some independence, for example to go to the bathroom or shower on her own.
The feet, next year
“This time the doctors have decided to carry out skin grafts from other areas of the body to cover the areas most affected by the warts, because they believe that this can prevent them from growing again,” he says, again from his home. “I no longer have pain, and I can walk without the weight I used to,” she adds.
This is how Bajandar has to walk. Zigor Aldama
However, he will still have to wait half a year for the doctors to put the scalpel to his feet. The team wants to see what the evolution is in the hands, the most affected extremities, to reproduce the strategy in the lower ones, which Khatun now cuts as best he can so that Bajandar can continue moving.
If all goes well, next year around this time he could “be a normal man” and shake off the nickname ‘tree man’ forever. The biggest fear, logically, lies in the possibility that the treatment will not work and the warts will grow back.
Bajandar’s hands in February 2023 and now. Zigor Aldama
If the worst omens do not materialize, Bangladesh will be an important milestone. Since its prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, became interested in the case, the country has tried to show Bajandar as an example of its economic development, which has taken off thanks to the relocation of industries such as textiles. The State has borne all the expenses of its operations, something that even caused some discomfort among the population that does not have that luck, and proudly showed the initial success.
However, when it was shown that the first strategy had not worked, Bajandar fell into oblivion and stopped receiving financial aid. He does not want to be famous, much less live again as the fair monkey with whom passers-by took pictures in exchange for a few coins. He just wants to “be useful and be able to work at whatever it takes to bring home some money.” For now, he is back on the right track to achieve it.
This content is exclusive for subscribers
Are you already a subscriber? Log in
Comment Report a bug
#tree #man #hug #daughters