Exactly a year ago in this month, Aadhi Thoppil Fabeer was being wheeled into a complex surgery that doctors had said he was highly unlikely to survive.

Surprising the doctors with his fighter spirit during a rare surgery that shut down the then two-year-old Aadhi's heart and brain activity to remove a mass literally eating away into his heart, he became the boy who died to live.

Aadhi had the rarest of the rare tumours removed from his heart in, again, a rare procedure that is said to be the fifth such successful surgery in the world. He was rendered clinically dead for 40 minutes to remove a 200-gramme cancerous mass growing on the inside and outside of his tiny heart last year in a surgery done in India.

By the time he was taken to hospital, doctors said that 95 per cent of the blood circulation to his heart was blocked and Aadhi had been brought into hospital "just in time".

Khaleej Times first reported his case while he was undergoing treatment in India last year.

Today, the young boy has been cancer free for a year now and is as ready and chirpy as any other three-year-old who is ready to start school by the next academic semester. However, Aadhi still needs to undergo tests every three months for the next five years to check if cancer has returned or not.

Reaching this stage has been a painful journey for both parents, especially Jeny Fabeer, who has been all throughout with her son. "My son underwent six cycles of chemotherapy for 30 days after a gap of every 21 days. The chemo cycle started on July 21 and ended on November 17," said Jeny who wanted to share her story so that others undergoing similar circumstances can know there is hope.

"Each cycle included giving four bottles of chemo which took anywhere between eight to 12 hours to administer," she said.

Since the IV was being given through his thigh, Aadhi could hardly move during all this time, she explained. "But he was playful."

Since Aadhi's immunity levels had fallen during the chemo, controlling infection was another challenge. "Luckily, he did not fall ill that often because I did not entertain anyone at home or at the hospital," said Jeny whose husband was in the UAE awaiting their return. "It was indeed an emotional time for us," explained Jeny who also said that she vented her feelings on Facebook.

"He had blisters in his mouth, lost all his hair and 30 per cent of his weight but he was a fighter. We are cautious and watchful. We can't prevent a relapse from happening since no precautions will help but we keep praying and believing," said Jeny.

Aadhi is the fifth patient in the world to survive such a surgery where doctors used a deep hypothermic circulatory arrest to reduce his body temperature to 15 degrees Celcius. The normal human body temperature is 37 degrees Celcius and humans quickly die if the core body temperature drops below 22 degrees Celcius.

Aadhi's father Fabeer Thoppil Subair told Khaleej Times last year that a sudden illness came as a blessing in disguise for the family as Aadhi's rare cancer was discovered. "It was on this day that we realised the seriousness of Aadhi's condition," recalled Fabeer.

The child was subjected to a battery of tests in the emergency ward of Dubai Hospital and a huge mass was found to be growing inside his heart. Further tests showed that Aadhi had an intracardiac yolk sac germ cell tumour in the heart, an extremely rare condition. Doctors told the parents that it was likely that the tumour had developed during the child's intrauterine life.

The yolk sac tissue develops on the third day of pregnancy but usually dissolves within a month. In Aadhi's case, the tissue had developed into a cancerous tumour.

Dr Naveen Vishwanathan, paediatric surgeon from Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) later told media that this kind of tumour is commonly seen in reproductive organs but is extremely rare in the heart.

Dr M K Mossa Kunhi, head of department, cardiac surgery and heart transplantation at VPS Lakeshore in Kochi led a 30-member team to operate on the boy on Eid day.

They said that the tumour was malignant and it was likely that Aadhi would not survive. During the nine-hour long surgery, doctors found that the tumour had dug even deeper than initially thought and despite their efforts, one per cent still remains lodged in his heart.

Source: Khaleej Times