GulnoraRapikhova, a 37-year-old patient, sat after almost 32 years of standing and just laying down. She had forgotten if sitting was even an option.

The patient had undergone chronic burns at the age of 5, that prevented her from sitting as the entire lower region of her body was burnt drastically. After 32 years of suffering she was able to find relief at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in Delhi.

While sitting down, after a successful surgery Gulnora broke into a big smile, saying, that “I’m happy, but I’m afraid. I’m very afraid”.

When Rapikhova was five years old, her clothes caught fire through a heating stove at her home in Sirdarya, a small town in Uzbekistan. She was alone at home at the time and by the time she ran to her mother, she had developed severe burns on her lower body including lower back and thighs.

She was kept in the local hospital for 6 months and almost a year in Tashkent. She had undergone five major procedures in the last three decades, but her wounds never really healed completely.

“It was very difficult, but I had to live. I went to school at the age of eight and got all my learning in class while standing or lying down on my side,” said Rapikhova regarding her condition before the treatment.

She was forced to develop her own routine pain management system; she taped clean towels over her burn wounds under her clothes. “When it got too painful, I took painkillers. That was all I could do,” she added.

She came to know about Apollo Hospital when she visited a free camp organized by their doctors at Sirdaya.

“She came to the clinic with an interpreter, and when I asked her to sit down, she didn’t. I said there was no need to be formal, and the interpreter said, she says she cannot sit down. She has not sat down in 32 years,” said Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery Department Consultant Dr Shahin Nooreyezdan, at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi.

“I almost fell off my chair with surprise. I examined her and found chronic raw and infected wounds down her back, buttocks and thighs. I had never seen such severe tissue wounds. I was stunned that someone had survived with such wounds for more than three decades,” the doctor added.

Being from a small town her parent could not afford her treatment in India, which was covered by a Tashkent based philanthropist.

Taking about the surgery, the doctor said that, “It was not a complicated surgery. We just took skin grafts from her lower legs to cover her wounds in a surgery that took a little more than two hours”. “Since there is a risk of chronic wounds turning into cancer (Marjolin ulcer) after 10 to 15 years, we did several biopsies to rule out cancer”.

“The healing has begun, and she will have to wear pressure garments for six months, and we’ll do a follow up in September,” he added.

Source: https://goo.gl/gSnkku