Posted on 11/03/2005 10:34:17 AM PST by Born Conservative
Born with a hole in her heart the size of a nickel, Hadiya Hussein, a thin, shy 6-year-old, tires easily when she plays in the heat of her native Iraq.
"She couldn't make more than 30 or 40 steps" before she has to sit down, her father said.
But because of a compassionate local soldier who met her amid the turmoil of the war in her country, she is scheduled to undergo surgery today at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center that will allow her to play like other children and live a normal life, doctors said.
During a three-hour procedure, surgeons will patch the hole that allows blood to flow directly between the ventricles, the bottom two chambers -- a situation that could lead to serious lung damage, doctors said.
An Army Reservist from Linglestown, Maj. Bradley Lauver, met Hadiya and her father Mohammed Hussein, during his current tour of duty in Iraq. Doctors there had told her father that she would die. Lauver sent e-mails to medical center doctors about the girl's plight.
A Pennsylvania businessman, Douglas Gelder, paid to fly Hadiya and her father, a water pump operator raising 10 kids on a meager income, to America. Two charity funds, Variety Children's Lifeline Program and the center's International Heart Fund, will pay for the operation.
Heart defects like Hadiya's -- a ventricular septal defect, in medical terminology -- are not uncommon among U.S. infants, but typically are repaired when children are 3 to 6 months old, doctors said.
Though Hadiya is unusually old for such an operation, "we don't anticipate any problems," said Dr. John Myers, director of pediatric and congenital cardiovascular surgery for the Children's Heart Group of Penn State Children's Hospital at Hershey Medical Center.
(Excerpt) Read more at pennlive.com ...
A Truly Beautiful Story...
Just remember folks, all our soldiers are doing there is killing civilians and we ought to withdraw immediately and send them a bunch of money so they can rebuild their country. That'll work out real good, like it did in 'Nam, which I'm told is quite beautiful. That's what some highschool "peace" protestors told me on the Michael Medved show the other day anyways...
Owl_Eagle
(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
That will never see the light of day in the LSM.
But this can't be! Our soldiers are out there torturing civilians in their never-ending quest for oil to return to King George.
Prayers for success! Because we care!!
AWESOME! Late to the party, but bumping so more can read this.
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