Surgeons from the moving series Take My Tumor.
Photo: TLC
People with tumors that are probably completely beyond your imagination. At TLC they thought: we’re going to put that on television. Do you actually do something like that to the viewers? Or is that just how it is and ‘everyone can be seen’? Judge yourself.
Warning: if you can’t handle confrontational photos, think for a moment about whether you should scroll down.
Yes, of course everyone can be seen. That’s as far as we’ve come Subway of course. But on TV, perhaps not everyone, for whatever reason, will watch large tumors. For the section View of the Tube we did. Subway saw the first of four episodes, which will air starting Tuesday evening.
TV about the disease cancer
A TV program about the disease cancer, that is of course not surprising. Unfortunately, just about everyone has to deal with it, either themselves – think of Dieuwertje Blok or Princess Kate – or through people around you. The TLC series Take My Tumor follows the lives of people who struggle with an extreme, rare or life-threatening tumor on their body. Or a lot of tumors.
In addition to American surgeons/specialists such as Dr. Kimberly Moore Dalal, Dr. Jason Cohen and Dr. Ryan Osborne, each time focuses on one special story. In any case, the doctors in this rather moving series do everything they can to help these main characters with tumors. They would like to operate, even if they would like to. But they also ask themselves the question: isn’t an operation more life-threatening than the tumors themselves?
Whole body covered with thousands of tumors
The lead actress (well, she doesn’t play anything at all) in the first one Take My Tumor is Charmaine, 42 years old, from Trinidad. Subway didn’t count, but we believe it when we hear that this is ‘the woman with thousands of tumors’. They are everywhere on her body, even her face is covered. This lady is one of those people you don’t want to stare at on the street out of respect, but you can’t avoid it. However, Charmaine, who has a beautiful head of hair despite all those tumors, is used to that. Everyone always stares at her.
Charmaine first developed tumors when she was a teenager. Her disease is called neurofibromatosis and she is in danger of dying. We see that she still had somewhat of a face at the age of 29, but that is no longer the case. She can no longer breathe through her nose. What the divorced Charmaine can still enjoy are her two sons.
Biggest challenge in the field of cancer
Later the Take My Tumor-viewer Charmaine enjoying Los Angeles. Besides a trip to a city she has never been to, she is mainly there for Dr. Ryan Osborne. The man who can provide some nice success photos of what he has achieved in the field of tumor removal is honest: “I have never seen this before and I have therefore never done this.” Osborne sees this patient as the biggest challenge as a doctor and goes for it. “But I also fear that it won’t work.”
For the result, you will of course have to watch the program about unlikely tumors yourself. A tip of the veil: Charmaine underwent 24 operations in ten weeks and spent a total of sixty hours under the knife.
Later in the series we can look at Alexandra, with a 10 kilo tumor from her neck to her waist. Amy has a tumor on her back and has allowed it to grow for seventeen years. A bizarre neck tumor is also discussed.
Number of cans from 5: 2.5
Note: for the Subwayviewer scored Take My Tumor at least a 3.5. However, the series will be very interesting for some, but not at all for others.
Take My Tumor can be seen weekly on TLC starting Tuesday (May 7) at 9:30 PM. You can also follow the series via Discovery+.
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