‘The pain is unbearable’: viral ‘tree man’ with extremely rare disease had his dream come true. But much worse was to come
- After his story went global, Abul Bajandar was able to get treatment and hold his daughter for the first time. Then his warts grew back bigger than ever
Abul Bajandar feared he would never be able to hug his daughter, Jannatul. It was made impossible by the gigantic warts covering his hands and feet, huge protuberances with the texture of tree bark growing especially big around fingers and toes, but also on the arms and legs.
These are an extremely rare symptom of his extremely rare condition, epidermodysplasia verruciformis. There are fewer than 10 documented cases worldwide and, since there is no known cure, Bajandar, 35, had lost all hope and was barely surviving as a beggar in the southwestern Bangladeshi city of Khulna.
“People used to give me some money to get their photo taken with me,” he recalls. “I was like a monkey in a zoo getting peanuts from visitors.”
Then, in 2015, a local journalist reported on Bajandar’s plight, and some media outlets further afield, such as the Daily Mirror and CNN, picked up the story. Suddenly, Bajandar was international news, with the documentary series Body Bizarre dedicating a whole episode, The Tree Man of Bangladesh, to him.
Even the country’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, took an interest, gathering the best surgeons in the country to try to remove the warts and the branch-like carcinomas covering Bajandar’s hands and feet.
In early 2016, Bajandar moved to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital with his wife, Halima Khatun, and three-year-old Jannatul. There, plastic surgeon Samanta Lal Sen, who was tasked with a series of surgeries to free Bajandar’s hands and feet, warned that success was not guaranteed.
