Ahmedabad: Father donates bone to get his daughter back on her feet

AHMEDABAD: As Shreeya, 8, took tentative steps with her left leg in a cast and her hands holding a walker, her father Amit Sharma prodded her to take a few more steps towards an independent life now that her bone tumour was gone. A part of Shreeya’s femur bone, which had to be cut to remove the cancer, has been replaced with a part of her father’s fibula (calf bone).

It is one of the few cases of bone transplant — called allograft — performed in Ahmedabad, said Dr Mandip Shah, a orthopaedic oncologist in the city who performed the corrective surgery. Shreeya’s bone affected with cancer was cut and doctors replaced it with a healthy bone and a customized plate that will assist her natural growth.

Amit Sharma told TOI that he was happy to do anything to get his little girl back on her feet and when the doctors suggested taking a piece of his bone, he stepped up to the plate. “About four months ago, she had complained of severe pain in the thigh. Investigations revealed bone cancer,” said Sharma. “She is a spirited girl and it was heart-breaking to see her unable to walk.”

Sharma owns a shop in a small village of Kalyanpur in Madhya Pradesh, near the Gujarat border.

Dr Shah said that the case was tricky on several counts.

“The girl is young and will grow further. Earlier, cutting away the limb was the only option, but now we perform limb-salvaging surgeries,” he said. “While a cement spacer would have been temporary, prosthetics would have run into lakhs which the family cannot afford. So we turned to the father.”

The medical team said that it will take several months and a few more rounds of chemotherapy to get Shreeya completely back on her feet but she has shown good recovery after the surgery a fortnight ago. “The removal of the bone will not affect her father’s functioning,” said Dr Shah.