Family’s agony as child suffers from rare ailment

By Vincent Bartoo

A couple at an IDP transit camp in Eldoret is agonising over their three-year-old child who suffers from a rare ailment. Ndung’u Mbuthia’s parents are baffled by his condition, which has left his tongue swollen to almost five times its normal size. Every morning, Ndung’u wakes up to bloody beddings due to wounds on his tongue that ooze throughout the night. His father, John Mbuthia, 26, and mother Esther Nyambura, 24, were displaced by the post-election violence and now live at Yamumbi transitional IDP camp. "When he was born, we noticed his tongue was attached to the upper side of the mouth and he would breast feed on the lower side of the tongue," says his mother. Overwhelmed by the joy of having a bouncing baby, the couple did not know the condition would degenerate into the current problem.
Alarmed by growth

"We thought the tongue would resume to its normal state but when a growth started below two weeks after birth, we were alarmed," said Mr Mbuthia.

The growth blocks the infant’s respiratory system, causing convulsions. The parents took him to Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret where the boy was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit.

"We were told he was suffering from ‘cystic hygroma’, a condition that affects the head and neck," said Mbuthia. Doctors performed an operation, which consisted of an opening on his neck.

"We could not afford reconstructive surgery and doctors told us all they could do was create the opening he could use a tube to breathe," said Mbuthia. Ndung’u was only two years old when post-election violence broke. The violence hampered their movement from the showground to hospital.

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