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CHINA STRINGER NETWORK/REUTERS
A Chinese patient, known as ‘Elephant Man’ because of the horrific tumors that deform his face, underwent surgery on Wednesday. Here, Huang Chuncai before the operation.
On Christmas day, a Chinese patient known as “Elephant Man” underwent another surgery to remove some of the unsightly layers of tumors that have deformed his face for decades.
Doctors removed more than 3 pounds of fleshy growth from 37-year-old Huang Chuncai’s left cheek during Wednesday’s operation at a hospital in Guangzhou, in China’s Guangdong province, Britain’s The Sun reported.
CHINA STRINGER NETWORK/REUTERS
Doctors during surgery on Wednesday at a hospital in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. They removed more than 3 pounds of tumors from Huang Chuncai’s face.
Huang, who has undergone several operations in the past six years, suffers from neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that affects the growth and development of cell tissue.
His tumors are so bad that he’s in constant pain and can barely speak or eat, and the extra weight on his face — 33 pounds at one point — has deformed his backbone and stunted his growth.
CHINA STRINGER NETWORK/REUTERS
Huang Chuncai before the operation Wednesday at a hospital in Guangzhou, in China’s Guangdong province.
Huang, from the province Hunan, lost his teeth at age 25, and his left eye has long been hidden beneath a crippling tumor.
In 2007, a neighbor explained to Reuters how Huang’s face began growing during childhood. The boy’s mother joked that he should be a government official because his head was so big, according to the report.
CHINA STRINGER NETWORK/REUTERS
Doctors prepare to operate on 37-year-old Huang Chuncai, a Chinese man whose face has been deformed by giant tumors for decades.
After that year’s surgery, she prayed her son would one day live a normal life.
“I am holding his hand, and he told me: ‘Don’t cry mother. I should get better. Everything that can be cured will be cured.’ I love him a lot,” Huang’s mother, He Baohua, told Reuters.
