How compassionate LA specialist helped mom covered in thousands of tumors through more than 60 hours of surgery in world first

An LA surgeon changed the life of a mother-of-two when he removed thousands of agonizing tumors from her body during more than 60 hours of painstaking surgery.

Dr Ryan Osborne, who felt compelled to take on the ‘one-of-a-kind case’ after hearing about her desperate situation, carried out a total of 24 operations on patient Charmaine Sahadeo over 10 weeks.

Ms Sahadeo, a mother-of-two from Trinidad, suffers from the rare condition NF-1 neurofibromatosis, which resulted in growths on her scalp, in her mouth, all over her face, arms, legs, buttocks, breasts and on her genital region. 

She had already undergone two surgeries in her home country to help with the debilitating disorder, but decided she needed to seek more help abroad, and launched a fundraiser in the hope of traveling to the US.

After years of waiting, she finally found Dr Osborne, an award-winning head and neck surgeon who was determined to help her overcome what is widely seen as one of the most serious cases of neurofibromatosis in the world. 

Dr Osborne was featured on TLC’s Take My Tumor, helping Ms Sahadeo to start a new life free of the tumors she has been forced to live with for so many years. 

Speaking to his patient on the show, Dr Osborne told her that because of how severe her neurofibromatosis is, she was ‘encroaching on some dangerous territory’, but that intervention was ‘urgent’.

He explained how removing the thousands of tumors would be a complicated and long process, requiring multiple surgeries over more than two months. 

With each tumor removed, he said, pieces of skin would also need to be taken, raising the risk of infection each time. This meant the procedures had to be done over multiple sessions.

How quickly they would work also depended on how much pain Ms Sahadeo could tolerate. 

Dr Osborne said: ‘You’re not going to feel anything during the surgery. It’s when you wake up. If I took this all off, it would be as if someone skinned you alive and I couldn’t give you enough pain medication to keep you comfortable.’

Despite the pain, Ms Sahadeo was determined to undergo surgery. 

Dr Osborne told his patient: ‘I’ve never done this before…. We’re going to do this together, one step at a time. 

‘All I can tell you is that I’m going to be here with you the whole way through and whatever happens we’ll figure it out.’

But in preparing for surgery, Ms Sahadeo’s medical team ran into a major roadblock: Her tumors were covering so much of her body, they couldn’t find a vein to infuse anesthesia through, meaning they wouldn’t be able to sedate her to operate. 

Opting to give local anesthetic, numbing just the affected area instead of sedation, Ms Sahadeo underwent 13 hours of surgery completely awake.

Dr Osborne was able to remove dozens of tumors – including several large ones on her face and ‘Frank’ in her mouth, as well as the extremely large tumor on her leg.

Over the next 10 weeks, he went on to operate on Ms Sahadeo 24 times, for a total of 60 hours.

Four weeks after her last surgery, back home in Trinidad, Ms Sahadeo said: ‘Life is 100 percent better for me.’

Dr Osborne is in the business of changing lives, and documents his incredible work on YouTube and social media.

‘When most doctors see a patient and it’s a complex situation, they just see high risk. I see the opposite of that, which is high impact,’ he said on his Instagram.

‘It’s an opportunity for me to have a huge impact on that patient’s life. I went into medicine to help people. 

‘Once I make a human connection with a patient, I don’t have a choice — I’m going to do the case.’

The father-of-two is director of The Osborne Head and Neck surgery and founded a charity which works to provide pro bono ENT surgical care to people worldwide.

He describes himself as someone who is ‘determined to make a difference in the world,’ with this being the reason why he trained to be a head and neck surgeon.

He’s a physician, he says, ‘but most of all he’s a man of the people, a visionary, and a person that never gives up on his dreams.’

He says he has dedicated his adult life to ‘serve others and help grow those around him.’ 

As well as running his private medical practice, he leads yearly medical and impact missions around the world with his charity the Dr Osborne Head and Neck Foundation.

It sees him and other specialists visit countries in Africa and South and Central America, helping those who require life-changing surgeries.