Courageous SMILE
after beating cancer, 10-year-old aleksandra undergoes a ground-breaking operation to reconstruct her eye socket
She’s only 10, but Aleksandra has shown courage beyond her years. Aged six, she had chordoma, an unusual bone cancer that affects only 35 people a year in the UK. Although the tumour was removed and Aleksandra is cancer-free, she lost an eye and part of the eye socket.
‘She lost the bones around the eye but she had to, just to survive,’ explains Aleksandra’s mum Dana.
Now though, Aleksandra is anxious about how she looks and this week’s Paul O’Grady’s Little Heroes follows the brave schoolgirl as she undergoes 10 hours of surgery at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital to create a new eye socket using bone from her hip.
Success
‘Aleksandra’s always smiling but she’s scared,’ says Dana. ‘But it needs to be done, it will be worth it and make such a difference.’
The episode also follows 11-year-old Fazeel as he is treated for an incurable condition known as ‘butterfly skin’, and fouryear-old Taheem, whose mum, Aida, learns to give him kidney dialysis at home.
Meanwhile, Aleksandra’s operation is a success and she can’t wait to get a prosthetic eye in a year.
‘I feel like people won’t stare now,’ says Aleksandra. ‘When
I get my eye, I’ll look like everyone else.’