STRONGER EVERY DAY

A cutting-edge pigskin graft to Bertie du Plessis’ stomach lining may have saved his life

- ELRI BOUCHER

HELL. That's the word he uses to describe his struggle with rectal cancer and it's easy to see why.

Bertie du Plessis has endured a multitude of medical nightmares: dozens of surgeries, several repairs to ruptures in his stomach lining, life-threatening sepsis, a blocked colon - the list goes on and on.

And each time he went under the knife it was just a temporary fix, leaving him no closer to relief from the excruciating pain in his gut. He'd reached the point in his ordeal where he was willing to try any treatment - which is why, when his doctors suggested grafting a piece of pigskin to his stomach lining to stop the ruptures, Bertie didn't think twice.

Pigs have similar genetic and physiological traits to humans and are increasingly being used in medicine, including in skin grafts for burn victims and in cases like Bertie's, where grafts of his own skin were no longer avaiable.

He recently underwent what is called a porcine xenograft a graft using pigskin - and his condition has improved remarkably.

For the first time in years he isn't in agony and, while he still has his health challenges, feeling relief from pain is nothing short of a miracle.

Bertie's health problems began seemingly out of the blue seven years ago. "He was in and out of hospital that year, his wife, Annamarie (61), tells us, sitting close to her husband in a restaurant in a mall near their home in Germiston, Gauteng.

Bertie (64), a retired toolmaker, takes her hand as she grows tearful. It was such a shock, he says. "I'd been as healthy as a horse all my life."

Then everything changed. "One night in 2016 I went to the bathroom and there was a lot of blood in my stool - it looked like there'd been a slaughter of some kind. Annamarie rushed me to hospital in the dead of night."