A 40-year-old woman was left with thousands of tumors all over her body after she gave birth to her second child.
Charmaine Sahadeo, the 40-year-old woman, was left with thousands of tumors in a severe case of neurofibromatosis, which causes the painful growths to pop up all over her skin.
The mother says she has thousands of bumps all over her body, which includes bigger ones on her leg.
Charmaine says the bumps on her legs make it hard for her to walk or even stand up.
The 40-year-old woman says no one wants to hire her due to her extremely rare condition.
Not only that, Charmaine says she is too scared to go to her son’s school functions because she thinks people would start to bully her.
The condition has knocked her confidence down.
Charmaine, who is from Trinidad, says she doesn’t even leave her house as children run away from her once they see her.
Talking about her condition, Charmaine says she had them since she was young, but the bumps only became big after the birth of her second child, who is now 17 years old.
She said, “She said: “I have had the condition since birth, but it started getting a lot worse about 15 years ago. It was very small and did not show up much until after the birth of my second child. Then after he was born it got a lot worse.”
She added, “It’s very painful, especially my leg. Right now when I squeeze the bump something like a large blackhead comes out.”
Charmaine has gone through 2 surgeries in an attempt to ease her condition, but she has run out of treatment options.
Talking about the complications of the bumps on her skin, Charmaine said, “Sometimes if you do that they can become infected. Once my entire finger swelled up and it was very painful. I have to be very careful. I have one of the most serious cases of neurofibromatosis in the world. Here in Trinidad, there is no help for me at all. I have had two surgeries to try and clear some of the lumps but they have swollen up again.”
She added, “I have three huge lumps on my leg and a big one on my side. In all I think I have thousands of lumps. On my face and head alone there are probably three thousand or more. It looks like my skin is a strange bubble wrap. It is the ones by my eyes that concern me the most. The doctors say they could remove them to stop them blocking any vision but I am too afraid of the risk to my eyesight. I really worry something could go wrong.”
Charmaine says she does feel down sometimes because of what the people say to her, but that doesn’t allow her to lose hope.
The 40-year-old mother says she sees herself as a beautiful person and does her best to ignore what people tell her.
She said, “I get a lot of stares if I go out and a lot of people bring me down. I see myself as a beautiful person and I try not to let people affect me. I can’t let myself be affected by everyone’s opinions.”
She added, “Some people do say some horrible things. Some people, especially children, get scared of me and run away. One person even told me that if they were in my position they would kill themselves. But I’m a happy person. At the end of the day I do everything that a normal person does. How could I think about doing anything to harm myself?”
Talking about her plans in the future, Charmaine says she wants to get treatment for the condition in a different country.
Charmaine said she would love to have proper treatment in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, or anywhere else in Europe.
She says Trinidad has run out of treatment methods for her.