A teenager has not been able to eat food for 10 years after a pool accident

A horrible pool accident left a teenager without intestines and unable to eat food for 10 years.

16-year-old Salma Bashir loves eating seafood – she will eat salty rather than sweet food every day – but she has not been able to eat properly for over 10 years.

The teenager has no small or large intestine or gallbladder; while his stomach is an open wound that must be dressed daily and is constantly leaking.

Salma, who lives in Pittsburgh with her mother and two younger brothers, still chews at home for the taste of her mother's home cooking, discreetly wrapping her mouthfuls in tissue and throwing them into a plastic bag. at his feet.

But she would give anything to eat well again.

Salma told Barcroft TV: "I'm not the kid who goes," Oh my God, ice cream! "I love the savory food, I love the meat, the seafood, I I do not always have seafood but I love seafood!

"I do not technically need to eat, but I still feel hungry.

"Maybe it's a brain case. it may be a problem of spirit. I have no idea.

"It would be great to swallow the food again."

Small for her age, Salma relies on a bag of total parental nutrition, connected to the body, to obtain the necessary nutrients.

"It's actually a bag filled with nutrient-rich liquids such as calcium, sodium, glucose, all the vitamins and everything you need. I am connected to that 20 hours a day. When it's connected for the first time, it weighs about 15 to 20 pounds.

"I'm about four feet three, so I'm very small. The reason I do not eat food is because I do not have any intestines at all. So there is nowhere to go if I eat something. & # 39;

Salma lost her intestines in an accident while she was on vacation with her family in Alexandria, Egypt.

Salma, then five years old, wanted to play in the baby pool while her pregnant mother watched her older brother in the bigger pool.

Her mother, Dena Ghaly, remembers: "She went once and she came back, she went another, she is very close, I can see her that it's the third time only and that she's gone. she did not come back. "

Salma was sitting on the pool's suction valve and the force was so strong that she snatched her from the small intestine, before anyone had the chance to lick her. ;remove.

Salma added, "I was swimming suddenly, I sat on it by accident. I know the lifeguard tried to get me out and he could not because the suction was too strong.

"My father tried to take me out. And then I know that a few people finally managed to get me out and when I got out, it was so traumatizing.

Dressed in a red swimsuit, Dena first assumed that her daughter's small intestine was her torn swimsuit.

"I found someone who was carrying her and all her intestines came out of her body, I could not believe that it was a gut, I thought that at the beginning it was his swimsuit. & # 39;

Salma added, "It was horrible. But what's good is that it was so bad that I fainted after a while.

With only a few weeks left, Salma's parents traveled to Pennsylvania with their young family for a life-saving surgery.

Salma was then on a waiting list for a transplant and after a year and a half – plus a fundraiser for the $ 300,000 operation – she underwent the operation which, according to his family would mark the beginning of Salma's life.

However, the small intestine graft was rejected and six months later she had to be removed with Salma's large intestine and gallbladder. his stomach must also remain open.

She said, "My belly was so open that we could literally see my inside. It heals slowly. But now it's not healing anymore. It is filled with paper tissues, so thankfully you can not really see the inside or anything, but it leaks 24 hours a day.

The sore in the stomach must be constantly dressed and limit the mobility of Salma. She is at home in the schools and uses a wheelchair to get around; it is rare to spend a month without a visit to the emergency. And all those trips to the hospital are expensive.

Dena said, "Everything is a cost. Every admission, every visit, every clinic. His lab costs about $ 1,000 a week, his TPN – a dose equals $ 300. & # 39;

Salma's family lives in the United States on a visitor's visa due to her health condition, which means that she is not eligible for public assistance and no pet insurance company. insurance will not pay for it.

For the same reason, Dena, a qualified doctor in his home country, can not work in the United States.

The doctors said that if Salma were to undergo a new transplant, she would have to replace five organs: her small intestine, her large intestine, her liver, her stomach and her pancreas.

There is no guarantee of success and the estimated cost of transplanting five organs is $ 3 million.

But that does not stop Salma from giving everything: she has already raised $ 15,000 on her GoFundMe page.

She now has 56,000 followers on her Facebook page of the makeup tutorial "Slay With Salma", although she uses it as much to escape her illness as to make her known.

Dena said: "She always smiles, she's always [a] a fighter, she is still challenging her situation. She does very good things with her condition.

Salma added, "I always look forward to this part of the day every time I wear makeup. I mean, I'm still in bed and I need so much energy to get up and even sit on a chair because of my belly.

"But when I do it, I forget it. That's why I like it.

"It's kind of my free time, you do not want to think about medicine, I just want to focus on something that makes me happy."