Nursing a miracle, growing new hope
Published: March 22, 2006
The yelp that comes from the medical station is indignant and ear-piercing.
It’s the shriek of a little boy who doesn’t like needles. But it’s a healthy cry, not a whimper.
Namatullah is six years old and, thanks to the compassion of Canadians — troops in the field and civilians at home — chances are he’ll live to be seven … eight … nine … however long a lifetime he has coming to him in a country of such unpredictability.
A month ago, Namatullah’s grandfather, in a last desperate act to save a dying child, walked five kilometres from his home in an impoverished section of Kandahar city, and threw himself at the mercy of Canadian soldiers at Camp Nathan Smith.
From outside the wire, he’d appealed for help from a sentry in the guard post. With approval from the base commander, they were searched and allowed entry, then taken to Capt. Adrian Norbash’s clinic, where the Canadian doctor examined the putrid mass of tumour and infection that covered the child’s entire right cheek and crept down his neck.
The immediate diagnosis was grim: Lymphatic cancer in an advanced stage, likely spreading into the liver, perhaps a month left to live.
Namatullah was in acute pain — his face, his abdomen. It hurt to speak and few words were uttered.
Norbash suggested the best that could be done for the boy was to alleviate his suffering by getting him to a palliative ward where nurses could ease his exit from life with powerful painkillers.
But, oh, look at him now.
A little spacey from the morphine shot that Norbash has just administered, his big brown eyes nevertheless take in everything with an avid curiosity. He smiles. He waves at a photographer’s camera. He clutches a roll of candy that Lieut.-Col. Tom Doucette has just pressed into his palm.
He speaks.
He lives.
Most remarkable is the physical transformation. Gone is most of the vivid purple growth of tissue that was once the size of a tennis ball. All that’s left is a welt the size of a silver dollar and that should fade in time.
One small six-year-old miracle in a land of tender hopes.
“This is really gratifying,” says an emotional Norbash, himself a Canadian of Persian descent. “It’s better than I could ever have hoped for.”
Who could have imagined this just four weeks ago, when even the cost of palliative care at a Karachi hospital — at $100 a day — was prohibitively beyond the family’s means?
It was pity that spurred Cpl. Brian Sanders, the base’s ambulance driver and a man crazy about kids, to email a photo of Namatullah to his church back in Edmonton, asking the pastor to raise donations.
At the North Edmonton Christian Fellowship Church, the response was swift and overwhelmingly generous.
“At the early Sunday service they raised $3,000,” says Sanders proudly. “And the later service, they raised another $7,000.”At last count, there was $18,000 in the kitty, intended originally for palliative care at a hospital in Pakistan. But there was also fierce praying and maybe that made a difference.
Rather than merely pumping him full of painkillers, the hospital administered aggressive chemotherapy treatments and the tumour rapidly shrunk away. The secondary cancer that had spread to Namatullah’s abdomen also responded to the therapy.
“He doesn’t appear to have an infection of the tumour remnant,” said Norbash after examining the boy yesterday. “He doesn’t have a fever. Really, it’s amazing.
“If it had been any other type of tumour than the one it was, nothing could have been done.”
The child first became ill about six months ago and his grandfather turned everywhere for help, endlessly turned away as a lost cause. (The boy’s father is an opium addict, with his own heap of woes.) But the grandfather, Taj Mohammad — once a commander in the Afghan army who spent years driving out the invading Russians, then years more fighting the Taliban — would not concede defeat.
That’s when he turned to the Canadians at Camp Nathan. They fell in love with the boy and so, clearly, did Canadians when they learned of his plight from a CTV report.
Said a grateful Mohammad yesterday, after bringing the boy to the base: “In three decades of war, this is the first time someone has helped us.”
The chemotherapy treatments will continue for the next six months, with the boy travelling between Kandahar and Lahore. While in this area, Norbash will keep a protective eye on the child, seeing him every few days, to monitor his response to the treatments. The hospital bill will be paid by the Edmonton church and Norbash is donating his services.
Namatullah is not completely out of the woods. But the chance of his survival now are about 70 per cent. Put your money on this beautiful little boy. Sometimes, there are happy endings.
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