The Livingstone Primary School pupil who underwent a lengthy operation on his face on Tuesday to correct a muscle defect that stopped him from smiling was doing well on Wednesday, his mother said.
Mother Sharon Johnstone said Keegan, 8, had had a good night but was now starting to feel pain.
“They say things look good for his recovery. They gave us the thumbs up,” she said from his bedside at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital (the old Johanesburg Gen). “We are very relieved.”
On Tuesday Keegan’s dad, Rodney, said the child’s mood the night before the operation had made the situation“touch and go”.
“Keegan was hearing all these questions being asked by the media and he began to get more and more nervous. I think the talk about it brought the operation home,” he said.
“But by morning, he said he was ready, and everything was back on track.”
Keegan was born with facial paralysis, a severely debilitating condition with profound aesthetic, functional, psychological and developmental effects. As a result, he was unable to smile. It affected his eyesight and hearing earlier in his life.
Surgeons cut a small piece of muscle out of his leg and implanted it into his face.
Johnstone, from Durban North, said they had been explaining the nature of the procedure to the “upbeat” primary-schooler for months leading up to it.
“We wanted him to know exactly what was going on so that he knew we were doing this for him and he wouldn't feel left out of that process. This wasn’t about us,” he said. He and Sharon, had been apprehensive in the minutes leading up to the operation.
“We are fortunate that he is in such good hands; they allowed us into the theatre so we could see him drift to sleep. Since then, while we are still anxious, we feel far more relaxed,” he said.
The doctors, he said, told the family the boy would have recovered from the operation by the weekend but the reanimation, if successful, would take between two and four months.
The family had been overwhelmed by the support from friends and family in both Johannesburg and Durban.
“He’s got quite a base of friends for such a small boy!”
Keegan has two sisters, aged 4 and 17. A small error regarding the boy’s date of birth, led to the Daily News incorrectly stating yesterday that he was 11 – he is 8.
“I was just so stressed out at the time, ahead of the procedure, that I had forgotten his year of birth. It was quite hectic at the time,” his dad laughed.
Keegan is one of four children who will be operated on this week and the procedure was performed by Smile Foundation medical director, Professor George Psaras.
The surgeries were made possible through fundraising by members of the Wits Surgical Society, who raised about R600 000.
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