Heartbreaking three words Hamza Ibrahim, 8, told his mum after learning he will soon go blind because of a medical blunder
An eight-year-old boy told his mother there is ‘no point in living’ after doctors delivered the devastating news he would never see again.
Hamza Ibrahim, from Adelaide, was just like any other schoolboy, but early this year he started suffering from headaches, nausea and general clumsiness.
His mother Jessica took him to two GPs who dismissed the symptoms, but eventually Hamza began to lose vision and had difficulty walking in a straight line.
He was rushed to the emergency department of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in the city’s north on August 28 and doctors eventually discovered what was causing the problems.
Little Hamza was diagnosed with a brain tumor of five centimeters.
The fluid buildup and pressure tragically caused permanent damage to the nerves that affected his vision.
Hamza Ibrahim, from Adelaide, was just like any other schoolboy, but early this year he started experiencing headaches, nausea and general clumsiness
His mother, Jessica, took him to the emergency department of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in the city’s north, where he was diagnosed with a two-inch brain tumor.
“As a result, he requires full-time care and daily assistance with simple tasks such as showering, dressing, walking, eating and even playing with his little sisters,” his aunt Cathryn Somerville wrote in a post GoFundMe page to raise money for his rehabilitation.
“Unfortunately, he can no longer enjoy the activities that brought him so much joy before his diagnosis, such as reading his favorite Harry Potter books, watching movies, going to school and playing basketball with his friends.”
In reality, Hamza had been suffering from unusual symptoms for some time, but his mother’s concerns were dismissed by two GPs.
Jessica, a single parent with six other children, said he was normally a “very happy boy” but his blindness devastated him.
“Yesterday he said to me, he thought there was no point in living if he couldn’t see,” his mother, Jessica, said. 7News.
“He says things like, ‘I’m sad I’ll never see your face again.'”
Hello Aunt said: ‘Unfortunately, he can no longer enjoy the activities that brought him so much joy before the diagnosis, such as reading his favorite Harry Potter books, watching movies, going to school and playing basketball with his friends’
Hamza was diagnosed with a five-centimeter pilocytic astrocytoma brain tumor
Hamza will also have to say goodbye to his school friends as he has been told he will have to attend the South Australian School for the Vision Impaired once he recovers from surgery to remove the tumor from his cerebellum.
His mother said that in the months leading up to his devastating diagnosis, there were subtle symptoms, including random headaches, nausea and general clumsiness, that were difficult to spot.
“There was no frequency, no consistency,” Jessica said.
“I would say to him, ‘Maybe you need to drink water, you’re dehydrated, maybe you need to get off your iPad,’ just the normal problems that you deal with as a parent.”
In July there were occasional attacks of vomiting, followed by more acute symptoms.
“He couldn’t walk straight… (but) when kids lose their vision and it’s so gradual, they don’t really know,” Jessica said.
“He was clumsy, he was bumping into things, and it just kept getting worse.”
His mother, Jessica (pictured with Hamza), said that in the months leading up to his devastating diagnosis, there were subtle symptoms, including random headaches, nausea and general clumsiness, that were difficult to spot
The Harry Potter lover will have to attend the South Australian School for the Vision Impaired
Despite the alarming symptoms, two GPs rejected Jessica’s wish to have more tests done on her son.
“In the back of my mind I was thinking, why don’t we do a CT scan, but you’re relying on the doctor’s opinion,” she said.
‘It wasn’t until the school called me and said ‘your son is not safe at school, you need to come and get him’ (that) that I brought a third GP to him who suggested taking him to a hospital and within six hours we had a diagnosis.
“I thought this was a nightmare and I couldn’t believe it at all.”
Jessica is now campaigning for doctors to provide further training in identifying the symptoms of tumors and to trust the instincts of concerned parents.
‘I don’t want this to happen to another child. It’s devastating,” she said.
Professor Jordan Hansford, pediatric neuro-oncologist at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, agreed that more education about brain tumor symptoms among young doctors and GPs is needed.
“It’s not unusual that in children it can take some time to diagnose brain tumors… it can be a story of quite a long time of symptoms and signs that are not specific or something like that,” Prof. Hansford told the publication.
“One of the warning signs I often teach young physicians about is that multiple symptoms occur and the concerned parent who has presented multiple times needs to consider: is there something more than just a cold, virus or flu.”
Brain cancer is one of the most common types of cancer in children. According to the Children’s Cancer Institute, approximately 120 cases are diagnosed in children and adolescents in Australia each year.