By Kay Quinn, STLtoday.com
ST LOUIS, MISSOURI — Imagine watching helplessly as a facial tumor begins to form on the right side of your jaw and eventually takes over most of the right side of your face. You have trouble swallowing, the tumor is painful and every doctor and surgeon who has examined you has been unable to offer you relief or hope of removing it.
That was the case for Beyene Tadesse, 30, a farmer who lives in a small village near Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.
For the past 10 years, Tadesse could only watch as his condition worsened. The mass formed from enamel cells that usually produce teeth. Instead, these cells produced a tumor the size of a tennis ball.
Doctors in Ethiopia and surgeons visiting from other countries had examined Tadesse. Some had even attempted surgery only to discover they couldn’t remove the tumor.
That’s when Dr. Rick Hodes, an American-born doctor who has practiced medicine in a Catholic health facility in Ethiopia for 20 years, contacted a St. Louis dentist, Dr. Ethan Schuman, to see if anyone in Missouri could help.
Thanks to Schuman and Dr. Michael Noble and his medical team at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, Tadesse arrived in St. Louis in early May for an operation to remove the tumor and reconstruct his jaw.
Hodes, who accompanied Tadesse on the three-day, 8,000-mile journey to St. Louis, recalled how desperate his patient was getting as his tumor began to threaten his health. The mass was taking over vital structures in Tadesse’s neck.
“It’s getting worse every week. It’s getting bigger, its getting more difficult to chew,” Hodes said.
Finally, after weeks of tests and pre-op exams, Noble and his team removed Tadesse’s tumor at St. John’s on June 17.
The tumor was invasive, and the surgery complicated. The most difficult part involved replacing Tadesse’s lower jaw bone or mandible.
“The lower joint has a hinge on each side,” Noble said. “So we’re going to actually carry the dissection up to the hinge that’s on his right side and we’ll actually replace the lower part of the hinge.”
In a nine-hour operation, Tadesse’s mandible was replaced with one that came from a cadaver.
Tadesse doesn’t speak English, but Hodes says he is grateful for all the medical care that he has received.
“He feels like he’s won the Powerball lottery. I’m serious,” Hodes said.
Schuman says the operation wouldn’t have been possible without the generosity of Noble, Dr. Makepeace Charles, St. John’s Mercy Medical Center and many other individuals and companies that donated their services to Tadesse.
“The biggest thanks for us is that he goes out and leads a relatively normal life, and I would love to be able to be there when he goes back to his family,” Schuman said.
For now, Tadesse will spend two months recovering from his surgery. He hopes to return to Ethiopia later this year.
Kay Quinn is a reporter and anchorwoman at KSDK (Channel 5).