Nine-year-old Wayne Mukwevere (9) smiles shyly at visitors as he follows his mother into the house.
He had not been able to smile in a very long while.
Neither had he been able to walk, eat or play with other children his age, not with a huge tumour that had covered the better part of his neck for the past five years, a tumour only diagnosed as cancerous recently and which resulted in urgent and successful anti-cancer treatment and complex surgery at Parirenyatwa children’s cancer ward, where they had been rushed from Sally Mugabe Hospital.
So Wayne could afford to smile because he had been relieved of the 15cm wide cancerous neck mass on February 24 by a team of local surgeons and specialists.
Wayne’s mother, Ms Talent Ngondi, says it was a miracle that her son was alive as he had suffered for many years.
At the age of four, Wayne developed a small lump on the left side of his neck which kept growing.
“The growth grew until it was big enough to cover part of his neck, but then it was just a mass that was not painful,” said Ms Ngondi. “Upon seeing this, his father left us. He claimed that in his family no one had ever had such a condition hence the child could not be his.
“He even told my family that I should take Wayne and his little sister to their real father because the tumour was a sign that his ancestors were not happy that he was being raised in the wrong family.”
Left to find her own devices, she consulted an apostolic faith healer who “treated” Wayne during the first 2020 Covid-19 lockdown.
This faith healer’s treatment included applying a warm compress to Wayne’s tumour daily until the skin around it broke and clumps of flesh and a lot of blood came out of the mass.
A week later, the lump had started reducing in size and the faith healer told her Wayne had been healed.
“My joy was short-lived because six months later, another lump started growing on the other side of my son’s neck,” said Ms Ngondi. “This time it was more aggressive and was growing so fast that I could actually see that it was changing in size daily. One day while he was playing at school, another child scratched him on the tumour and the skin around it broke. He bled so much that the school head called me and I took him home.”
Ms Ngondi took Wayne to Sally Mugabe Hospital where a biopsy was performed and it revealed that Wayne had soft tissue sarcoma, a type of childhood cancer.
She stayed with him at home, but the mass on his neck kept getting worse until it started producing a foul smelling greenish pus.
On January 8, Wayne started bleeding from the tumour while he was in the toilet and collapsed.
“He was vomiting, soiling himself and also having seizures that at one time I thought that he would not make it. At around 4am, my friend who was with me at that time went out to look for a car to ferry my son to the hospital where he was immediately admitted and put on oxygen. Wayne urgently needed blood but I did not have money to buy it. The doctor found blood for him later that day.
“The doctor who saw him the next day said Wayne was supposed to be admitted at Parirenyatwa children’s cancer ward and we were transferred that day. He was taken for a CT scan to see if his cancer had spread and Kidzcan helped to pay for that scan.”
Fortunately for Wayne, the cancer was still confined to his neck and armpit where another tumour had begun to develop.
Wayne after surgery.
For the other tests and procedures done on Wayne, she got assistance through Mhizha Primary School where her son was enrolled.
The school raised US$600 during a fundraising event held in honour of Wayne and this went a long way to help her cover part of the bills.
He had two cycles of chemotherapy and the ENT specialists at Parirenyatwa confirmed that they would be able to conduct the surgery to remove the tumour as it was responding to treatment.
After getting another blood transfusion, Wayne was taken into theatre where the surgeons removed the mass on his neck.
“I sat on that bench waiting to be called back into the theatre. I had even prepared myself for the worst because my son had been in so much pain. When I saw the doctors coming out, I went weak and didn’t believe that Wayne was awake. I thought I was dreaming and would wake up to be told that my son was dead,” she said.
She got to carry the mass that had been removed from her son’s neck to the laboratory and she says it was so heavy she had to balance the box on her head.
Wayne recovered well and was discharged the following Monday and has resumed his chemotherapy sessions.
According to the World Health Organisation, cancer is the leading cause of death for children and adolescents.
Each year, an estimated 400,000 children and adolescents of 0-19 years old develop cancer globally.
In Zimbabwe, a total of 293 childhood cancers (age 0-14) of all races were registered in 2018 in the National Cancer Registry.
Ms Ngondi said she would have never believed that her child had cancer because she always thought only adults could get cancer and once diagnosed, they would subsequently die.
Even when she told her husband that their child had cancer, he was of the belief that cancer could not affect children and he used this to further cement his claim that the child was not his.
Ms Ngondi had the support of her close friend Mariam Solomon who stood by her when things were difficult as her family was far and could not be with her.
“I never thought my son would be treated here because everyone had told me that cancer can never be treated in local hospitals and some were suggesting I take Wayne to India, but I had no money to do that,” she said.
“I am thankful that the doctors gave my son another chance. Now I tell other parents not to stay with sick children at home. They should take them to the hospital so that they can get help early.”
According to ear, nose and throat (ENT), head and neck specialist Dr Memory Bara, the late presentation to a medical facility is a major challenge in Zimbabwe and has impacted negatively on many people’s chances of survival.
Dr Bara, who led the team of specialists who operated on Wayne, said Zimbabwean doctors were more than capable of managing conditions like Wayne’s as long as they were presented in the early stages.
“We always advise the community that they should not hesitate to visit their local clinics or any health service provider because they are equipped to tell them the best route to take,” she said.
“If they see that patient early they can refer them to us in the early stages of the disease when it would not have caused much debilitation to the child. This is not just a message to mothers with young kids who are suffering but even to the adult community for them to seek early treatment because these services are available locally.
“Of late, we are seeing a lot of patients coming in with advanced stage cancers than in previous years. Maybe due to the logistical challenges that we have faced as a hospital, but people are seeking alternative treatments while these tumours are growing.
“So, we want the public to know that services are available and there is no bribe needed for them to be operated on them. They just need to follow the queue and when we see that this is a more urgent case, then it is obviously prioritised.”
While there is a long queue of patients waiting for such procedures, Dr Bara said they prioritised cancer patients to ensure that an aggressive management plan could be implemented before the cancer spreads.
“Even after the surgery is performed to remove the tumour, we expect some of them to receive chemotherapy and radiotherapy. We also urge the community not to resist receiving radiotherapy because it is still a pertinent part of the treatment after the surgery is done,” she added.
In Wayne’s case, Dr Bara said the surgeons had worked with other specialists that included anaesthetists who had to make sure that the child was physiologically stable for the surgery to be successful.
She said there were possibilities of complications like injuring the major vessels and arteries but the team had been meticulous and had managed to remove the tumour.
“We have to highlight that it was not a matter of just resecting the tumour but after removing it, we had to decide how we were going to reconstruct that area,” said Dr Bara. “Thankfully, we managed to do primary closure using the skin which remained after we removed the tumour.”
Dr Bara said Wayne’s treatment journey did not end with the surgery but was just beginning as he would have to undergo chemotherapy, which would take a toll on his health.
She said both mother and child still needed support which the hospital was capable of providing as it had the necessary staff and equipment.
ENT specialist and lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe Mr Naboth Matinhira who was also part of the team that operated on Wayne, confirmed that the country indeed had capacity to treat most conditions that patients presented with.
“As a lecturer, I am actively involved in the training of medical students as well the post graduate students and in my assessment of the curriculum and the clinical exposure that our students have, we do have the capacity to train doctors in terms of general practitioners and the specialists. We can actually perform most of the operations locally so I would encourage the public to seek help from us first before seeking alternatives,” he said.
He said Wayne’s case was only one of many where local medical practitioners had successfully operated.
He said it was advisable for people to seek their opinion before deciding to travel to places like India which could prove to be more expensive.
Zimbabwe offers subsidised medical care for paediatric and elderly patients while for the rest of the population, Mr Matinhira said the procedures were fairly affordable.
As Wayne recovers, his mother is confident that he will beat the cancer and return to school. – The Herald
