Pretoria woman with lip cancer to undergo surgery
Clara van Heerden from Hermanstad thought she only had a cold sore, but it turned out to be cancer.
Clara van Heerden
A woman from the west of Pretoria is set to finally undergo a procedure that will mend her lip, reports Pretoria Moot Rekord.
Clara van Heerden from Hermanstad thought she only had a cold sore, but it turned out to be cancer.
By December last year, she had cancer of the lip and it had spread to her jaw and lymph nodes.
ALSO READ: Pretoria woman blames Steve Biko Hospital for lip cancer
She would have undergone surgery this week, but her body was too weak, said her husband, Anton, on Wednesday.
As a result, Clara was admitted to the Steve Biko Academic hospital on Monday so that the doctors could get her strength back to normal.
He said she was placed on a morphine drip and doctors inserted a feeding tube so that she could get food into her body.
“Since the first of this month, Clara could not eat anymore – the pain was either too much to bear or she could not keep the food in,” Anton said.
“She always struggled to eat, but this month it just got worse.”
He said Clara lost 30 kilograms in two months.
Clara is to undergo a CT scan before the procedure next week.
“The CT scan will not only show how far the cancer has spread, but also if she will be strong enough for the procedure next week,” he said.
There was not yet an exact date for when Clara would have the surgery.
“Clara is very weak and she is struggling to walk,” he said.
“I hope that everything will start to work out for the best.”
Anton explained that the procedure to mend Clara’s lip would involve the removal of her lip and a piece of her jaw.
“The doctors will use a piece of her hip bone to mend the piece of jaw that they have to remove and a part of her arm’s meat for her lip,” he said.
Pretoria Moot Rekord previously reported that after Clara got a cold sore that would not go away in June 2016, she was referred to the Steve Biko Academic hospital by her family doctor.
Clara van Heerden. Photo: Supplied
“The doctor said it looked like lip cancer, which was why he referred me to the hospital,” she said.
She said the results of three biopsies and one computed tomography (CT) scan showed it was only an infection.
“But just after the third biopsy in July 2018, it started growing and getting worse,” Clara said.
She returned to the hospital after her lip got worse.
“The doctors then decided to treat it as cancer, but said they would have to cut my lip out,” she said.
“I immediately got up and walked out because I simply could not believe I was about to lose my lip because of a cold sore.”
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