Amazing Life-Changing Surgery Performed on Haitian Girl

Marlie Casseus was a beautiful little girl living in Port-au-Prince Haiti, when her face slowly began to change. By the time she was 14 years old, her face was entirely unrecognizable and frighteningly disfigured. Kids at school and in her neighborhood were merciless in their taunts and insults. She was rejected by her friends and neighbors, who would cross the street whenever she walked by. Her extreme disfigurement not only caused her physical pain, it also caused her emotional anguish and suffering.

Marlie suffers from a rare form of polyostotic fibrous dysplasia, a genetic disease that causes the sufferer’s bones to become swollen and as soft as jelly. About 150,000 people have been diagnosed with the disease worldwide, but only about 3% of them suffer to the extreme extent that Marlie has. Her nose had been almost completely destroyed by the disease, her jaw had swollen to nearly twice its size, and the painful growth became so large that it had begun to crush her breathing passages. The pressure of the tumor on her eye sockets was so great that she was going to go blind if something wasn’t done. That’s when the Haitian nonprofit Good Samaritan organization stepped in.

The group helped bring Marlie to the United States in September so that doctors at Jackson Memorial Medical Center in Miami could evaluate her condition. The hospital’s International Kids Fund, which works to provide medical care to needy children all around the world, began collecting money for Marlie’s operation. Donations came from as far away as Hong Kong and Iceland, and doctors donated their time to perform surgery on the girl to remove the devastating tumor.

The first surgery was planned to remove the tumor from one side of Marlie’s face, but things were going so well that doctors were able to remove the growth from both sides of her face. The surgery took 17 hours, and afterward she was breathing on her own in stable condition at Holtz Children’s Hospital. Dr. Jesus Gomez, of the University of Miami School of Medicine, was one of the surgeons involved in the operation. Although he was exhausted, he took the time to give reporters the good news of the operation’s success. "She’s doing extremely well," he said. "She’s healing according to plan. She’s extremely happy. We’re extremely excited." Gomez said that he had asked Marlie to give him a thumbs up if she was okay, and the brave girl raised her thumb right away.

Doctors began the surgery by removing the mass of bone and jelly. Then they inserted metal plates to reconstruct Marlie’s lower eye sockets, and they reconstructed the interior of her nose. Before and after photographs of the girl show an amazing difference already, with the bulbous mass that had covered her face completely gone. Gomez says that the next step will be to operate on her jaw in about two months, and more reconstructive surgeries will follow later. He said that although Marlie will be able to breathe through her nose now, she probably will not ever be able to smell or taste.

Marlie’s mother, Maleine Antoine, expressed her profound appreciation to the surgeons and to the many people who donated funds to pay for her daughter’s operation. "I hope that she has a life and will be happy like any normal teen girl. She has suffered so much," Antoine said.