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Honya is Admitted to Operating Room for Surgery as Mom Tries to Stay Strong
November 9, 2009 by Jeremy
When Honya first came into our office, I’ll be honest, I did not want to get involved with her or her family. She was - and remains - one of the cutest, cuddliest kids I’ve ever met. Plus I have a soft spot in my heart for little girls. But she was just so waif-like; so skinny; malnourished.
Hadn’t we just gone through something like this with Daryan Salah? I was loath to send another child to die. And yet, it seemed that turning them out at the door of our office in Iraq would actually be just that.
“Triage is the mantle of God.” That’s what our friend Jeff Smith, author of Generation BIG, says. Still, we seem to get stuck making the call on a daily basis. This is one of the reasons we have our Advisory Board and why we strive to make decisions in teams, in consultation with local and foreign cardiologists and surgeons, and with other partnering non-profits like Kurdistan Save the Children (who paid, in part, for Honya’s surgery as a part of our Local Solutions program).
Ultimately, the team decided to take Honya to surgery… and that’s exactly where she is right now. In the operating room, under the leadership of Dr. Sertaç Çiçek.
I’m just as nervous as I was the day I met her in my office. It’s her weight and the pulmonary hypertension that have me scared. These hours in surgery just drag on… the not knowing… the lack of access to updates along the way… the uncertainty about what lies ahead in the intensive care unit as nurses try to wean her off the breathing machines.
It’s a long course ahead… and we still don’t know if we made a life-saving choice. But as we’ve listened to your hearts in our donor feedback sessions, we’ve heard you say that you want us to risk it on the kids that no one else will take. We’ve heard you say that you want to be involved in helping those on the edge of hopelessness. We’ve heard you say that you want your money to give a chance to those who have no other chance…
So that’s what we’ll do. And we’ll leave the results to GOD, in whose hands are all things.
With hope,
Jeremy Courtney
Executive Director
Follow 9-month-old Honya on Twitter: @honyamahdi. Subscribe to Honya’s updates via RSS HERE. Follow Honya’s thread of longer stories (with pictures & video) on the PLC blog HERE.
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Jeremy Courtney lives and loves in Iraq as a co-founder and Executive Director of the Preemptive Love Coalition. He's also the father of two spectacular children, and married to the lovely Jessica Courtney. When not absorbed in PLC work he can be found writing songs and singing about hope and future. |
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