The breasts that almost shattered her dreams

By John Agaba

The year was 2012. April. And like any other girl who started to experience body changes (physical and hormonal), Alice Amuron was anxious when she hit puberty.

What was it that was happening to her? All of a sudden, soft voice, tender body, and monthly menstrual periods – she just couldn’t take it all in.

Her mother sat her down, and without mincing words, she said: “You are a woman now. Not a girl anymore. If you sleep with a man, you can have a baby.”

And then Amuron understood. And she was relieved.

But her relief was cut short when her little breasts kept growing and didn’t stop and people started talking that her breasts were bigger for her age. The anxiety set in again.

“I started to feel out of place. Why everyone said my breasts were bigger. During playtime, I looked at my classmates’ chests [of course the females] to see if actually my breasts were bigger.

“But later, after my mother told me that some girls developed bigger breasts than others, and that my breasts were normal, I ignored the self-attention,” says Amuron, then in Primary Four at Kachango Primary School, Gogonyo sub-county, Pallisa district.

‘Discomforting’

But months later, she couldn’t ignore what was happening to her – not anymore. The breasts seemed to grow overnight. And they were starting to cause her pain; it felt like they were stretching her skin envelop.

“They started to feel heavy. Suddenly, they couldn’t fit in my blouses and school shirts. I started to put on my mother’s T-shirts, which were a little bigger.  Then some auntie advised we tie a cloth around them to hold them firmly against the chest. So, every morning, before I walked to school, my mother would help me get a piece a cloth and tie it firmly across my chest to hold my breasts. But it was discomforting. The breasts felt so squeezed. I would want to free them. But I couldn’t.”

The little girl’s dilemma was far from over. In fact, it was only starting.

In 2013, she was 13, and the burgeoning breasts on her chest enlarged further and tying a cloth around them couldn’t help. She had to let go of the cloth.

And then a myriad of plight set in. Every stride she made, her breasts felt like they would drop off her chest to the ground. They felt heavy and painful.

‘I couldn’t bend’

Every place she went, people turned to have another look at her – at her breasts to be particular. They seemed to pity her. And this ‘killed’ the girl. She no longer participated in co-curricular activities at school. She no longer could run. No more playing. Whenever she collided with another pupil as they hurried to enter class through the narrow doors, she felt a very sharp pain cut right through her. The piercing pain wouldn’t go away until after 10 minutes. The girl’s plight worsened by the day. She no longer could perform any house chores.

“I couldn’t bend to lift anything – be it a saucepan of food or a basin of water. I couldn’t fetch firewood anymore. I couldn’t carry a jerrican of water from the well. My responsibilities were relegated to just washing utensils and eating. I couldn’t even bend to sweep the compound at home. Then some people started talking that I had been bewitched. That they had never seen my condition.”

The stigma

Her father, David Okello, took her to a Pentecostal Church so pastors could pray for her. But that channel did not work.

Then he took her to Pallisa Hospital, but all in vain. It was very dark for the young girl, who, only a year ago had been excited that she had finally become a woman (when she had started developing breasts).

“If this was the price I had to pay, then the breasts shouldn’t have come in the first place,” she said.

“At school, every pupil looked at me with this eye. You know, like I was ‘cursed’. Suddenly, the pupils I sat next to didn’t want to sit with me. If I sat on a bench, the others left. No one wanted to talk to me. I would run into them gossiping about me. ‘Look, the one with the big breasts has come.’ No one wanted to be around me. Even the boys, who, only a year ago had started to throw passes at me, turned the other direction when they saw me come.

“I felt rejected. Like an empty soul treading onto the lives of the innocent, me the guilty one. I woke up one morning and told mother that I wasn’t going to school anymore – that I was done. I broke down and cried. My parents looked at me. But I think they understood.”

Turning point
 

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BEFORE and AFTER. (Credit: Lawrence Okwakol)

That was when Lawrence Okwakol, a correspondent for New Vision in Teso region, showed up.

His portrayal on the girl’s rather painful journey, published in the New Vision newspaper on December 19, 2014, caught many people’s eyes, who sympathized with the young woman.

Kampala businessman Dr. Sudhir Ruparelia and wife Jyotsna offered to take care of the girl’s medication. New Vision would take care of the other operational costs and logistics.

Following a series of tests at Mulago National Referral Hospital, Amuron was diagnosed with a rare condition of the breast connective tissues – usually called macromastia. (The condition is caused by excessive production of the female hormone oestrogen, which is responsible for breast growth and size regulation). 

‘Thank you’

Consequently, she was operated on and her breasts reconstructed at the Comprehensive Rehabilitation Services (CoRSU) Hospital on Entebbe Road. This was on January 27 this year.

Amuron spent about five hours in the operation theatre.

“I really want to thank you (New Vision) and that man (Dr. Sudhir Ruparelia). He gave me another chance at life. If only I can meet him (Dr. Sudhir), only to say ‘thank you’ to him ...” says the young woman, clearly revealing how indebted she is to the Kampala tycoon.

“I now feel okay… you know, like a girl ought to,” she says. “I have resumed school too. And you know what; pupils don’t give me that look of the ‘cursed’ girl anymore. They actually want to associate with me.”

‘I had given up’ – mother

It is nine months after the successful surgery at CoRSU. When we visited her at her village in Gogonyo sub-county last week, the young woman was all vivacious, helping her mother with home chores. She was actually peeling cassava, before she sat down to clean utensils and dry them.

The 15-year-old is now lively, feisty, secular, and pretty too — not the sunken and withdrawn girl, whose abnormal growth in her breasts had caused her to drop out of school. She is enthusiastic about life again.

“I want to read hard at school. It is unfortunate I sat out [of school] a few years. I would be in Primary Seven now. But it’s okay. When I grow up, I want to make lots of money so I can also help those who can’t afford.”

Her mother, Esther Asio, was thankful to God He sent them ‘good Samaritans’ to help her daughter to live a normal life again. “I had given up on Amuron and wished her a quick death to relieve her of the suffering, but then came you people (New Vision) and that man (Dr. Sudhir). God bless him.”

“God does not sleep. How He made a man I only hear is called Sudhir and his wife to come to my daughter’s rescue, is testimony that God lives.”

Amuron’s father, David Okello, said he had sold two of his three oxen to raise money to treat her. But all had remained in vain . . . until Dr. Sudhir came along.

“I ask God to bring us other well-wishers who can take my daughter to a good school. She is very clever.  If you see her performance reports [before her breasts started swelling], she was very good.

“She always scored highly. But these UPE (Universal Primary Education) schools ... they are not good.”



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