Story By: Jonathan Macias, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash
This young man with a rare face cancer which has left his ear on a huge tumour next to his cheek has found a doctor offering to give him life-saving surgery after posting his story on Instagram.
Sebastian Alejandro Amurin D’Amico, 23, lives in the city of Moreno in the province of Buenos Aires in north-eastern Argentina and he suffers from Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), an aggressive and highly malignant form of cancer that develops from skeletal muscle cells and affects 0.5 percent of patients with a malign lump.
D’Amico told local media: “In 2014 I started to feel a lump in my right jaw, I thought it was a pimple but it kept growing, so I had a consultation at the Ramos Mejia Hospital. There they decided to do a biopsy. In January 2015 I received the results and all the data conclusively confirmed that I had this cancer.”
He underwent surgery in 2018 but the tumour returned so he started radiotherapy.
He said: “I spoke to another doctor and started doing radiotherapy, but I had to leave because I had a lot of toxicity. In the seventh session, I had to stop because of the pain, I was taking morphine every four hours.”
He reportedly stopped the radiotherapy treatment because of the extreme pain and in 2019 he shared his story on Instagram where he now has more than 19,000 followers.
The 23-year-old has received 220,000 ARS (2,648 GBP) in donations from netizens and said “today we are campaigning, but with the issue of coronavirus and the increase in the dollar it is really complicated”.
However, doctor Eduardo Sosa reportedly contacted D’Amico and offered to examine him in the capital Buenos Aires to determine if he can be operated on again. The doctor reportedly offered to give D’Amico the operation for free.
Sosa told reporters: “It is important to keep in mind that this is health, and that to generate a surgical intervention […] everything will depend on the patient’s condition because the surgery can be very successful but still harm him.”
D’Amico said: “I am very happy with this opportunity. I am proud to know that there are surgeons who dare to do the operation.”
Argentine oncologist Ernesto Gil Deza told local newspaper Infobae: “It (the Rhabdomyosarcoma) tends to grow very quickly and metastasise.”
It is unclear if D’Amico has yet been examined by Sosa.
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