CHENNAI: From the day she was born, Savitha's* parents knew that something was off with their bundle of joy. While urinating every time they feel the urge is a characteristic of most infants, this was different - she was leaking urine from her genitals as well. "We noticed that the smell of urine was always there, as she grew up, though she was a very clean child. It's only when she started going to school that we realised how bad it was," says her mother. It might have ended up being a cross that the girl would have borne well into her teens, if doctors at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital hadn't stepped in, surgically.
For 12 years, the lithe, slightly embarrassed girl bore the burden of an incredibly rare genetic defect that made her the laughing stock of her school, because every time she sat down, she'd wet her clothes and whatever she was sitting on without even knowing it. "As soon as they reached the age when wetting themselves wasn't normal, other students starting teasing her because she would wet her underwear, her skirt and anything she came into contact with. When we got home, she'd be in tears refusing to go back to school," her father P Mathivanan, who works in a small firm in Ambattur, chips in.
Just talking about the horrors that her classmates put her through, as she went through days of wiping off her urine from benches with her pinafore, made the girl's eye well up with tears, "I never want to feel like that again," she says, shuddering ever so slightly when she uses the word 'that' to describe her condition.
As with most middle-class families, they sought help from affordable general practitioners, who most often treated her for incontinence (inability to contain urine) and suspected that she had a nuerogenic bladder. It was only last year, that a CT scan revealed what the real trouble was. An extra ureter, that took urine from her kidney and deposited in the space above her genitals, causing this leaky state of affairs. "It is a congenital condition and the extra ureter must have developed as the result of a genetic anomaly," surmises Dr V Selvaraj, Professor of Urology at the RGGGH. Where people have one ureter running from the kidney to the urinary bladder, Savitha's left kidney had two ureters, with one not connected to the bladder - a condition that hasn't been identified in published journals yet.
Though the surgical solution was fairly simple for the five-member team, it was still a challenge because such a condition had never been encountered before, "The decision we took was to not remove the extra ureter, because it would cut down on the vascular (blood supply) system that existed between them. Instead, we joined them at the entry point near the kidney and closed off the empty end, so that the leaking would stop," he adds simply, about a three hour-long procedure, that has transformed this little girl's life.
Helped along by the CM's Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme, the family is relieved and hopeful that they'll never go through such a damp patch in their lives ever again.
What is a duplicated ureter?
When a person is born with a duplicated ureter, a genetic anomaly again, usually two tubes about 20 cm long flow from one kidney to the bladder - supply is doubly efficient. In this case, the second ureter didn't lead to the bladder but to the genital organ.
(*Name changed)