Fighting the curse of the face-eating tumour
A Jehovah’s Witness who for decades refused all surgery on his horrific facial disfigurement has been given hope by a British doctor and new medical technology.
Unwilling to accept a blood transfusion, Jose Mestre has allowed the bloody tumour that first appeared on his lip in adolescence to obliterate almost all of his face.
Now 15 inches long and weighing 12 pounds, it has blinded him in one eye and made eating a daily ordeal. As it begins to block his airways, doctors fear his life could be in danger.
But now one of Britain’s leading facial surgeons has proposed treating Jose, 51, by employing ultrasound waves to coagulate the blood before the operation.
This should allow his growths to be removed without risk of heavy bleeding – satisfying his religious prohibition on blood transfusions that has so far hampered his search for treatment.
Jose was examined by two doctors in Britain – Loshan Kangesu, consultant plastic surgeon at Broomfield Hospital, and Dr Iain Hutchison of St Bartholomew’s in London.
Dr Hutchison, who also runs the Saving Faces surgery research charity, is optimistic that a single operation with a harmonic scalpel could have a dramatic affect on Jose’s features.
Full story here.
Blood issue at a glance: The Watchtower leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses say NO blood, BUT they actually DO ALLOW some blood “fractions”.
Problem is this variance is so esoteric complicated that by the time special elders appear in the ER with the rule book, the JW patient is at the point of no return,bleeding to death.
NOW,they blame the hospital staff for not having a “cell saver” machine instead of the Watchtower leaders who are responsible for making the rules.
I was born a 3rd generation Jehovah’s Witness in 1957 and endured the Watchtower’s no blood commandment with longstanding bleeding Crohn’s disease.The Watchtower leadership expects followers to die for their dogma and many have.The medical staff get blamed and are ‘damned if they do damned if they don’t’.
In 20 years there will be artificial blood for anyone who chooses it,putting an end to this drama.
(Some educational links provided below:)
http://www.ajwrb.org/ Jehovah Witness blood policy reform site
http://www.towertotruth.net/Articles/blood_transfusions.htm Will you die for a lie?
Why can’t he just save up his *own* blood for this?
Jehovah’s Witness are against storing and transferring blood so hence not saving up his own!!
That guy’s a complete idiot, it would benefit society if dumbasses like that would just die out.
Dumb ass
just die dumb ass
I was brainwashed by the self-proclaimed Jehovah Witnesses for three years when I was a teenager. After I quit when I was 18, I was so furious that they had stolen so much time from me and had interfered with my psycho-sexual development that, to this day, I fantasize about killing the Governing Body [the dictators of the Jehovahs in Brooklyn, NY]. Cults need to know that they make victims feel this way when they rape their minds. Understand, I will never do it, but, knowing our animal nature, I do not feel guilty about the feelings. I quit in 1975 and I still hate them. Now I go by the following rules: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I heard this from Carl Sagan. And the best revenge is living well, as heard from Jerry Seinfeld, and lastly, a quote from President John F. Kennedy, when asked his definition of happiness. He said, “The ancient Greeks defined happiness as the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.” Not bad. I am very comfortable and donate a lot of money to cult awareness groups. A mind is a terrible thing to have raped.
The dude who brainwashed me and his wife are both long since dead (from natural causes), but, man, do I ever hate them! I don’t hate the true believers; they are victims just as I was. I hate the guys, and there are many, who know it’s bullshit but stay in it for unhealthy reasons. (sex, control, power, sadism)
I wish there were a way we could move against cults legally in a free society, but there isn’t. When I see them, I ignore them. I do not acknowledge them. They are never wasting an instant of my time again.
I can well understand how in authoritarian societies, cults are kept under control.
The Jehovahs often brag about how they were persecuted, driven underground, and killed in The Third Reich, in the USSR, and in China. When they say that, I say, “Really? So what’s the BAD news?”
With lots of help from family and friends, PLUS reason and using common sense, and ‘the full use of my powers along lines of excellence, I am able to keep my fury and wrath against that organization and other cults under control.
Who knows, though. What if a doctor told me I had a terminal disease and six months to live? Hmmmmmm…