- Diagnosed with a rare overgrowth condition, Manuel’s daughter’s leg wouldn’t stop growing
- Growing faster than her body could handle, the lipomatous tumour made her skin stretch and sag to accommodate the weight of the extra tissue
- Ballooning to 78 kilos, doctors made the decision to amputate
Here Manuel Ramirez tells his story in his own words.
Waking my little girl, Jasmine, then two, in bed, I smiled.
‘Morning, sweetheart,’ I beamed, her legs wriggling with excitement. ‘Time to get you changed.’
Pulling down the zip on Jasmine’s onesie, I froze.
That wasn’t there before, I thought, inspecting a strange mark on her left leg.
The texture of Jasmine’s olive skin was dimpled, like the peel of an orange, and looked slightly swollen.
I alerted my wife, Verenice, and we figured Jasmine had developed a harmless rash.
A few weeks later, when we noticed the rash hadn’t healed, we took her to the GP who wasn’t worried.
As the months passed, the rash on Jasmine’s leg seemed to be getting worse, and her leg continued to grow.
‘Most people have a limb slightly larger than the other,’ the GP assured us.
It didn’t seem to bother Jasmine who adored playing with her older siblings, Eric, then 23, Marissa, 20, Anastashia, 12, Ariel, eight, Verenice Junior, six, and Manuel Junior, three.
Jasmine loved parading around the living room, singing and dancing.
Gradually her swollen leg got bigger and bigger. Within a year, it had grown to almost double its size, while the other remained average.
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Concerned, Verenice and I took our girl to hospital, where doctors ran blood tests and took a biopsy of the tissue in her leg.
‘We think Jasmine has an overgrowth syndrome,’ they said, explaining it was a rare group of genetic disorders characterised by excessive growth of a body part. But that wasn’t all.
The mass in Jasmine’s leg was a lipomatous tumour made up of fat tissue.
Thankfully, it wasn’t cancerous, so they decided to wait to see how the condition progressed before taking action.
As Jasmine grew, so did her leg – in circumference and also in length.
‘Why does my leg look different to everyone else?’ Jasmine often asked.
‘God made you special,’ I said, hand-drawing her a booklet, all about her ‘lucky leg’ and why it made her so wonderful.
By age six, Jasmine’s ballooning leg was so heavy it was impacting her movement.
In theatre, surgeons removed 10 kilos of extra tissue from her foot, calf and thigh. But within a few weeks, she’d gained it all back, plus some.
Growing faster than her body could handle, her skin stretched and sagged to accommodate the weight of the extra tissue.
Over the next two years, Jasmine underwent two rounds of liposuction to remove excess tissue, but each time it grew back with a vengeance.
By 10, Jasmine’s leg weighed about 63 kilos.
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While it slowed her down, it wasn’t painful and she refused to let it stop her doing things she loved, including swimming, jumping on the trampoline and running at the park.
As her skin continued to stretch, infections arose, and Jasmine spent weeks at a time in hospital for treatment. Over time her body became immune to most antibiotics.
By the time she was 11, the stares and cruel comments from others in public started to take their toll on our usually bright and bubbly girl.
‘I just want to be normal,’ Jasmine cried.
‘You’re perfect as you are,’ I said, cuddling her.
While her siblings and friends experimented with clothes, Jasmine had to wear tights that were specially tailored to fit.
Last September, Jasmine, then 13, started using a wheelchair as the weight of her leg was impacting her ability to walk.
The mass had grown so large it had spread to her abdomen, making it difficult for her to breath, eat and empty her bowels.
The following month, she developed another infection. Doctors threw everything at it to bring it under control, but it was no use.
Terrifyingly her leg just wouldn’t stop growing – and it was putting our girl in danger.
‘It’s her leg or her life,’ docs warned, advising they’d need to amputate.
When we broke the news to Jasmine, she was devastated.
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‘We can’t lose you,’ I said. ‘At least this way you’ll have a chance at a normal life.’
Jasmine was terrified as she was wheeled into surgery a week later.
During the gruelling 17-hour op, surgeons worked to remove her leg, which weighed a whopping 78.9 kilos, at her hip.
They also removed excess tissue that was suffocating her reproductive organs, bladder, bowel, stomach, and lungs.
Shockingly, after the op she’d lost a total of 83 kilos.
Waking in recovery, Jasmine felt the spot where her leg used to be.
‘No more giant leg holding me back,’ she smiled. I was so proud of her bravery.
While in hospital, we started a Facebook page called ‘Jasmine’s Journey’, where we share daily updates on her progress.
Her recovery has been slow, as Jasmine undergoes regular physio, using crutches as she learns to rebuild strength in her right leg.
Now 14, our girl’s learning to embrace her new body, and all the things she’ll be able to do.
She’ll be returning to school in the next few months, after having time to recover and learn how to use her prosthetic leg.
Jasmine will need to go to hospital every six months to have the growth of tissue in her lower abdomen monitored.
But with Jasmine’s upbeat can-do attitude, her future looks bright.
To contribute, search ‘Help Jasmine on her recovery journey’ on GoFundMe.
