KEY POINTS:
For seven years, every chance reflection or glance in the mirror would remind Auckland teenager Sa'ed Chamma'a of the day it rained boiling oil.
The pot of oil that fell on him when he was 5 had left him with a bald patch stretching across the left side of his scalp.
The injury, suffered in his native Jordan, left the boy understandably self-conscious.
His father, Maher, tried specialist treatment, to no avail.
That was until last October, when Sa'ed, now 13 and a pupil of Mt Roskill Intermediate, was referred from the Starship hospital to the National Burn Centre and surgeon Amber Moazzam.
Corrective surgery took place in two stages. The first operation, at the end of November, saw Mr Moazzam insert a deflated balloon, or tissue expander, underneath the skin beside the scar.
The incision was closed up, and two weeks later, he began putting a saline solution into the balloon.
The procedure was repeated weekly for two months. As the balloon filled up, the hair-growing skin around the scar would stretch.
Sa'ed said the whole process was not painful, but was "annoying" towards the end stages when some 400ml of liquid had been pumped into the balloon.
By late January the balloon had expanded enough for Mr Moazzam to operate again.
"It gave me a lot of loose, hair-bearing skin, so then I was able to cut away the non-hair-bearing scar, and pull the hair-bearing skin down to close the defect," the surgeon said.
The procedure, while not unusual, is most common in breast reconstructions.
Sa'ed is delighted with the results, especially as it was all timed for school holidays to avoid awkward questions from classmates.
