In 2014, Melyssa Delgado Braga from Brazil, who was 1 at the time, was diagnosed with a benign tumor under her chin. However, within a year the tumor had grown the size of “another head” eating away at her jaw and tongue. Due to its size, she was unable to bite or swallow and her helpless parents had to watch while their daughter faded away.
Melyssa’s parents, Carol and Menasses had limited resources yet they spent everything they had on treatment for their little girl. Surgeons in Sao Paulo told the devastated parents that their child was so weak that it was impossible for them to carry out the lifesaving operation she needed.
The Braga family refused to give up and searched for another option to save their daughters life. When Melyssa was 3, doctors at Santa Casa de Misericordia Hospital finally came up with a solution and a chance to save the young girl’s life, with surgeons in the United States.
Image from (Gabriela Gonçalves/G1)
However, the family simply couldn’t afford the travel costs, never mind the medical expenses, so they appealed to people on social media in an attempt to raise the funds they so desperately needed. People around Brazil started sharing young Melyssa’s story and it soon went viral. News agencies even picked the story up and Melyssa’s story got even more exposure.
Dr. Celso Palmieri, a Brazilian doctor working in Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, read the girl’s story and was shocked and heartbroken like the rest of the world upon seeing the pictures of the girl with a massive tumor on her tiny body.
Dr. Palmieri thought that his department could help the child and sent a screenshot from the video to fellow surgeon Dr. G.E. Ghali who has experience operating on similar cases. Dr. Ghali agreed that surgery was an option, so Palmieri reached out to the Braga family.
As chairman of the Health Center, Dr. Ghali used his contacts and managed to gather sponsorship from the Willis-Knighton Health System in Shreveport to support Melyssa’s surgery and her parents’ stay in the United States.
Within a week, the family was flown to Louisiana where doctors were preparing to operate as quickly as possible. Seeing Melyssa’s condition in the flesh was even more astonishing for the doctors, and they said she was approaching malnourishment, while her airways were being blocked by the growth.
The family was right not to give up, and after eight taxing hours in surgery, surgeons managed to remove the tumor. The tumor itself weighed almost 20 percent of the three year old’s body weight. Not only did surgeons remove the life-threatening tumor, they also reconstructed Melyssa’s jawline and tongue. A month later Melyssa was able to eat and swallow on her own and her parents were overjoyed to hear her laugh for the first time ever.
Image from Caters News Agency
Even though the surgery was a success, Melyssa’s full recovery will understandably take a few years, however, doctors believe she will have a long and healthy life ahead of her.
If it wasn’t for the power of social media, this little girl might not be alive today. Her parents got their miracle and no longer have to watch their daughter suffocate slowly under the weight of the 5-pound tumor.
Courtesy LSU Health Shreveport