By Nasratu Kargbo
A 16 year-old girl named Adama Kalokoh who has been diagnosed with breast cancer is pleading for assistance so she could get medical treatment that she so desperately needs.
A onetime lively school girl like every other kid, Adama started noticing changes in her breast whilst attending school in Freetown. As time went on, the swelling increased and got worse, accompanied by excruciating pain. Seated on a low bench, the thin girl carries on the left upper side a flesh that can be compared to the size of a five years old child’s head; it was a swollen and disfigured breast. Closer to her was a bowl of hot water and a towel and as she tries to clean her infected breast she said, “I was a school girl about to take my BECE exams when this whole thing started, I noticed a mark on my breast and later the mark disappeared”
Speaking to Politico with consent from her family, Adama said she later started feeling her breasts getting heavier, prompting some people in her village to say she was likely pregnant; her sisters did a pregnancy test on her and it came out negative. Later the breast got swollen to a certain point that the tumor forced the breast to spilt open. She cried “As you see, one can see everything inside my breast, it is very painful, I cannot sleep, and I stink and cannot be around people because of the stench’’. As she carries the wrapped breast in one hand, and wipes her tears with the other she said “presently I feel extreme pain on the upper part of my breast, because the upper part has recently spilt open. I don’t have parents, all I have are my sisters who have done everything they can to help me. Please fellow Sierra Leoneans help me, this is too much for me, I need to be operated on”, Adama pleads.
Her elder sister Aminata Kalokoh stated that they have been through a lot, with the whole thing starting like a joke. “Someone directed us to Well Woman Clinic, I took Adama there; we did tests and scans, we were referred to another hospital where the whole thing got mixed up. Now the situation is worse, the breast is not a good sight,’’ she said.
“My sister’s breast burst open; she lost a lot of blood and water. As you can see, I have to launder these rappers every day because she uses them to wrap her breast; and the breast leaks a lot,” he said.
She explained to politico that Adama was in a village called Mataro in Moyamba district, where she was receiving traditional healing. She brought Adama to Freetown because she believe that the traditional healer could not do better.
“I am pleading with the first lady Madam Fatima Bio, Adama is an underage girl please help her, I am also appealing to different organizations to please help us,” he said.
Breast Cancer has dug too dip into Adama’s life that it has changed every aspect of her life. Adama and her sisters continue to appeal.
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