PATIKA PROVINCE, Afghanistan – It was a discovery that would bring together people from across the world, and change the life of a little girl forever.
In October, 2010, an Afghan soldier came across an 8-year-old girl named Fareeda while patrolling through the area of her remote Eastern Afghanistan village. About 100 families live in the village, but Fareeda was especially noticeable.
That’s because Fareeda suffered from hemihypertrophy – a rare condition in which extremities on one side of the body grow to enormous proportions. Fareeda’s hand was the size of a watermelon. Her thumb, index and middle fingers were massively bloated, as were portions of her right arm, which was almost twice the length of her left. Only her pinky and ring finger were unaffected by the relentless growth. If left untreated, the condition would eventually become fatal.
“She was having difficulty with her hand in that condition,” her father, Mohammed, a doctor in the village, said. “She tried to play with the other kids but her big hand got in the way so she became very shy.”
The Afghan soldier and members of the coalition saw Fareeda’s massive deformity and wanted to help the girl. But it would take a lot of work and a concerted effort between the U.S. military, the Global Medical Relief Fund, the Shriner’s Hospital, and a leading hand surgeon before any of that would be possible.
In late June, the journey began. Fareeda and Mohammed took their first helicopter and airplane rides when they were flown to New York, where they stayed at the Ronald McDonald House.
“She liked the plane, she would do that again, but she didn’t like the helicopter because it was loud,” Mohammed said with a smile.
The Global Relief Medical Fund, in conjunction with the Shriner’s Hospital in Philadelphia, helped make Fareeda’s trip and surgery possible.
Fareeda and Mohammed spent about five days both before and after the surgery in Philadelphia, including the Fourth of July fireworks celebration in the city.
“The trip was a big moment in my life,” Mohammed said. “I was really impressed with the outside world. I saw a country with religious freedom. I saw the people there applying rules by themselves. I saw a different kind of people and they were all respecting each other and respecting me, so this was a huge moment in my life.”
Another memorable moment was when Mohammed met Dr. Scott H. Kozin, a professor of orthopedic surgery at Temple University, and one of the world’s leading hand and upper extremity surgeon’s at the Shriner’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia. Kozin would perform the surgery that gave Fareeda her new hand.
“As a doctor, the modern machinery and things that I saw at the U.S. medical clinics was amazing,” Mohammed said.
Kozin said it was easy to talk with Mohammed, whereas Fareeda, who is very shy, was much more of a challenge.
“When Fareeda got here, number one she was shy - number two she was scared,” Kozin recalled. “Number three, I think just being a female, being away from her family (her siblings and mother did not accompany her) made it more difficult. While she was here, she stayed up in New York in the Ronald McDonald house and then as time went on she started to play and play with more kids. Then she started to interact with more adults and started to come out of her shell. With the doctors she was still very shy but apparently with the other people she was very engaging and very interested in playing with the other kids and that was very new because initially she wouldn’t do any of that.”
Kozin said Fareeda’s case of hemihypertrophy was the worst he’d seen. Fixing it was not a particularly life-threatening surgery for Fareeda, Kozin said, but it was challenging. He said the corrective surgery required him to remove the large, nonfunctional digits from her hand, while preserving blood supply to and not destroying any of the functional parts of her hand and arm.
“In Fareeda’s case, we noticed that her ring and small finger functioned fantastically – everything was normal,” Kozin said. “So what we opted to do was to remove the grotesquely-enlarged thumb, index and long-finger and then leave her with a little bit of an enlarged palm to act as a post so that when she curls her ring and small fingers she can grab objects between those fingers and her palm. What we opted to do with the arm was to remove as much redundant tissue as possible to make the arm a more appropriate size.”
Fareeda was immediately able to use her surgically repaired hand, Kozin said.
“When she first saw it, we didn’t know how she was going to react – was she going to be happy, sad…who knows because it’s difficult with a language barrier,” Kozin said. “But she was happy. It was lighter. She could move those two digits and she was already beginning to grasp items between those two digits and her palm before she left.”
Mohammed said he has also seen noticeable changes in his shy daughter.
“After the operation she was very happy and she was able to play with the other kids. Before that she tried to play but her big hand got in the way,” Mohammed said.
When Fareeda returned to Afghanistan Aug. 5 with her father, she was able to do something else she never could previously.
“She has a younger sibling, so one of her complaints was that she couldn’t hold her younger sibling because her arm was so heavy and then adding a baby on top of that just made it impossible for her to lift the baby,” Kozin explained.
Now, thanks to the efforts of Kozin, the U.S. military and a host of charitable organizations, that is just one of many things Fareeda will now be able to enjoy.
| Date Taken: | 08.24.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 08.24.2011 20:00 |
| Story ID: | 75863 |
| Location: | PAKTIKA PROVINCE, AF |
| Web Views: | 1,384 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
This work, Fareeda’s gift: Philadelphia doctor reconstructs Afghan girl’s hand, by CSM Ryan Matson, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
