5 year old Ahmal Jones can play a range of instruments and has entertained thousands with his talents, but tonight he is just back home from the hospital after a cancerous tumor was removed from his kidney. The young man was assisted by friends of pediatrics, which today organized a press briefing to give an update on his condition:
Lisa Johnson - Surgeon
“At this present time he has been tolerating fluids. He has gone on to a soft diet he is doing well. He’s up and walking around and will soon be ready for home.”
Looking at 5 year old Ahmal today in his room at universal hospital, you’d never have guessed that he just had this massive 2 and half pound cancerous tumor removed from one of his kidneys. This special x-ray test shows the normal kidney on the top right of your screen and on the left, you can’t even make out the other because it’s blacked out by the massive cancerous tumor. General surgeon, Dr. Lisa Johnson successfully removed that tumor on Saturday and says that procedure was only the beginning:
Lisa Johnson – Surgeon
“In situations like these the first modality can and will be surgery followed by chemotherapy and or radiation therapy. Now in Ahmal’s case what we have to do is to stage the disease and that gives us an idea of the severity, if it has spread and where it has spread to. When we get all that information then it can be decided what chemotherapy regime to use and if radio therapy will be necessary. So at this time we await the pathologist’s report. And with that putting that together with our operative findings we stage him and then refer him for chemotherapy.”
Q: “How far is he from being out of it?”
“That assessment, in terms of the cancer, cannot be made for years.”
And while Ahmal, a celebrated child musician with prodigious talent, has gotten a lot of publicity, the help he received from Friends of Pediatrics is available to anyone:
Lillett Barley Waite - Friends of Pediatrics
“Friends of Pediatrics has been working at this for quite some time as has been mentioned before but not to highlight Ahmal’s case because he is a famous kid. Because when Ahmal was referred it was not because of his status as a musician or his status… his famous status. It was his of a child who was ill and was in a position where the parents could not afford to do anything else and knew not where to turn. That where Friends of Pediatrics comes in.”
And they will have to continue to “come in” for this young survivor who’s just started his battle with cancer.
Ahmal's condition is known as Wilms' Tumor and it is only the second time it is known to have been diagnosed in Belize.