An 11-year-old Maine girl is recovering from her fourth surgery to treat fibrous dysplasia, a condition in which a defective gene causes fibrous bone tissue to grow in place of one or more normal bones, leading to fractures, according to an article in the Morning Sentinel.
At age 6, Camryn Berry developed a mass in her mouth that her mother, Tammy, a registered nurse, noticed and brought to the attention of a physician. Leanard Kaban, D.M.D., M.D., and chief of oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMS) at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, is now treating Camryn.
Camryn's condition manifested in the form of an inward-growing tumor described as roughly the size of a baseball inside her head. Its growth moved her eyeball, and an orbit specialist was brought in to assist during her most recent surgery, in which the mass was shaved down. Two more surgeries are planned, the first to make additional corrections to the structure around her eye.
"I definitely don't like the surprising wakeups in the middle of the night with throbbing teeth pain," Camryn told the Morning Sentinel. "But, on the other hand, I am so glad that I am getting this experience because before I was diagnosed, we didn't even know, let alone think about, all the people and children with these facial differences."
For more information, visit the Children's Craniofacial Association website.
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