By RAWLINGS OTIENO
For many young girls, the onset of growing breasts although natural is met with a mixture of embarrassment, confusion and finally acceptance.
And like any girl her age, Lilian Achieng, an orphan who resides in Siaya County, was amazed by the tiny bumps starting to develop on her chest three years ago.
But, several months later the now 14 year old girl, was a wreck after she noticed that her left breast was growing abnormally fast.
"I first started itching and within a short time, my left breast started swelling," says Achieng who is a pupil at Nyarwara Primary School in Siaya County.
According tests conducted at to Nairobi Womenâs Hospital, the class seven pupil suffers from a rare disease called breast fibreadenoma â a condition that causes growth of tumour on the breast.
Benign tumour is a group of cells that support other kinds of cells in the breast and are made of fibrous and glandular tissues.
When Achieng noticed her breast was increasingly becoming bigger, she informed her grandmother who on examining her declared that her daughter had been bewitched.
Achieng was taken to several herbalists who gave her an assortment of concoctions but this neither deterred the growth, nor the pain she was feeling. Lilian Achieng ponders over her dilemma [Photo/ Collins Kweyu/ Standard]
"At school, the pupils started to mock me, while back at home the villagers claimed someone had cast a spell on me that is why my breasts were growing disproportionately," says the tormented teenager.
Recently, her sick breast begun discharging a whitish substance causing her excruciating pain, that at night she lies awake as others sleep.
