How does she feel about the treatment her son has received? Excellent she says This is an allergy-like condition that causes all of the symptoms that you describe. No one knows the exact cause of PLE, although it probably has something to do with the body's immune system and its reaction to sunlight. The skin reaction is caused by ultraviolet light, and it usually occurs in the summer. High factor sunscreens can help, but in people who are very sensitive to ultraviolet light, the only solution is to stay out of the sun. There is a treatment that can be undertaken in the winter, which often prevents problems the following summer. This is called desensitisation phototherapy or photochemotherapy It is only available through specialist dermatologists. One reason why you do not get a rash on your face is that you are probably desensitising your face naturally I suggest that you get a referral to a dermatologist soon.. Once a year I escape the scandal-driven British press to breathe the headier air of a developing country's media It is my attempt to cleanse my soul of the sin of trivia. So 10 days ago I found myself in the National Cancer Hospital, Colombo, with a bunch of Sri Lankan reporters, talking to Digna. The ward, with its low grey walls, is jammed with anxious mothers and children, some with grotesque tumours disfiguring their faces.
Kevin has been here for three months occupying a corner of the scruffy paediatric ward just big enough to accommodate a cot for him and a moulded plastic chair for her.On each side of Kevin's head, a zig zag plaster marks the spot where the radiotherapy is targeted. A shy lad, he swings his emaciated legs - the treatment has killed his appetite - over the side of the cot, beneath a small poster of Christ giving a blessing, which Digna has stuck to the wall.We have come here in search of real patients with real experiences of the government health system, which is free but where there is much criticism of the offhand manner of doctors and nurses. My aim is to demonstrate to the local reporters on this British Council-sponsored course how one powerful human story is worth a dozen political platitudes.So the reporters begin probing Digna. How does she feel about the treatment her son has received? Excellent, she says. But essential drugs are short, the equipment old and outdated and there are not enough staff, the reporters insist. The staff do a very good job, she retorts.Well, the reporters persist, if there were one thing she could change what would it be? She pauses. |
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