Nineteen-year-old single mother, Tracy Harris, is seeking the public’s help to offset the cost of reconstructive facial surgery for her one-year-old baby girl.
Little Saadiyah has Congenital Macrostomia or Tessier number 7 cleft, a rare craniofacial anomaly.
Patients with it are born with bilateral macrostomia that consists of a “double” transverse cleft on the left side and a single transverse cleft on the right side.
As such, Saadiya requires a staged reconstructive surgery to repair the “double” left-sided clefts, but this is not available in Guyana.
Harris told the News Room that she struggled for some time by meeting with different doctors to determine her daughter’s condition and the best way forward.
“When she was born, the doctors asked me if I was on any medication while I was pregnant and I told them no. We went to several clinics, doing tests and all those things but they did not know what it is. All they told me was that it was a birth defect, that is all,” Harris told the News Room.
After almost a year of trying to determine what was wrong, the family managed to speak with a doctor here, who referred them to another physician in the United States, where the facial reconstruction surgery will be done.
The cost, however, is hefty, and the single mother cannot afford it; US$50,000 is needed for the operation. The teen mother said that life for her daughter has been tough, as she is unable to connect with others her age.
“She has a small cousin and every time he sees her, he runs and cries and she cannot understand why he is crying so she starts crying too.
“There was this one time, a little boy saw her on the road and he ran across the road from her, nearly got hit down. So it is hard,” the distraught mother said.
Anyone willing to assist Little Saadiya can contact Tracy Harris on 673-3720 or make direct deposits to Republic Bank to account number: 300000049244.
