This is a story of how google search, coupled with faith, led us to Amardeep Children’s Hospital (ACH) for Hirschprungs’ disease treatment for our 2 years old son Munza.
Having struggled with chronic constipation from birth and especially after introduction of solid foods at 6 months, Munza underwent his first surgery in Zambia when he was 1 year 4 months olds in June 2017. At the time, what the doctors saw on his barium enema images was just an elongated colon and they went straight in to re-sect it. The pathology report after surgery showed that our son had Hirschsprungs’ disease and not just an elongated colon. As a way forward doctors suggested he undergoes 3-staged surgery (putting a colostomy, pull through and later colostomy closure) to correct the condition.
Having known what the actual cause of our boy’s suffering was, and given the 3-staged treatment plan, we decided to look elsewhere for a solution. What we needed was firstly expertise; someone knowledgeable and experienced enough in managing the condition, someone who had handled a handful of such cases seeing that the condition was quite rare, especially back home in Zambia then secondly, the possibility of having a single staged operation as an option compared to the 3-staged procedure.
How we arrived at Amardeep Children’s Hospital among many other hospitals in India was purely based on faith and trust. Before settling on Amardeep Hospital, we contacted several big hospitals in India. Most of them could only give us a cost break down and the obvious 3 staged treatments plan but we were not getting the confidence and the peace of mind we needed most.
We decided to search the internet for a Children’s Hospital that had previously handled several HD cases and that’s how Amardeep Hospital popped up and we thought of giving them a chance by contacting them. From there we had several back and forth communication with Dr Amar Shah, who we feel helped us have the confidence and peace of mind which we were looking for. His experience and knowledge about the disease was obvious in the way he explained the different treatment plans and answered our all the queries. Simply put, he added a “personal touch” to the whole process and promised that our son would be in safe hands.
This was obviously a very big risk on our part as we did not personally know anyone who had taken their child to this particular hospital and some of the surgeons we had contacted were not really for the idea of a single stage treatment plan and even worse a laparoscopic procedure.
After comparing feedback we got from other hospitals and seeing testimonials of the good works they had done in the past, we decided to give Amardeep Childrens Hospital a chance, if not the only chance we had to fix our child’s condition. We also called one of the parents whose son had been treated Amardeep who highly recommended the hospital to us.
There we were, with a lot of faith that we had made the right decision, we flew to Ahmedabad the first week of March 2018. It was our first time travelling to India and Ahmedabad in particular but here we were.
We thank God and the all the Hospital staff that the procedure (one staged laparoscopic pull through) went as planned and within a few days, the boy was up and about playing and being himself. As we write this testimonial, it’s been 12 days since the surgery was done and though we are still we are still in Ahmedabad, waiting for a few check-ups to be done before we go back to Zambia, we are seeing good progress. When we look back, we have no regrets selecting Amardeep CH as the facility which would treat our child at all. We took a leap of faith bringing Munza to ACH and it paid off!
We are thankful to Dr. Amar Shah, Dr. Anirudh Shah, Dr Beena Shah and all the friendly staff of ACH for contributing greatly to Munza’s recovery! He can now return home and live a normal life thanks to you all.
Email (mmufana@yahoo.com) and carolmilambo@gmail.com)
