--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "soleil0k" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Membaca berita ini hati saya menjadi terenyuh, semoga semua penganut agama bisa terbuka hatinya membaca berita ini dan tidak fanatik lagi.Saling bahu membahu menolong meskipun berbeda agamanya. Tiny Namitullah's fine legacy Mar. 24, 2006. 07:05 AM ROSIE DIMANNO COLUMNIST KANDAHARDamn it all. Damn it all to hell. Should have known that hope is such a fragile thing in Afghanistan, and happy endings such rarities. Namitullah, the little cancer-stricken boy who only days ago seemed to have a new lease on life thanks to some tender-hearted soldiers at Camp Nathan Smith and a lot of generous Canadians back home died yesterday. He was 6-years old. Forty-eight hours earlier, when examined here by Capt. Adrian Norbash, a physician with the Provincial Reconstruction Team, the child's condition had appeared significantly improved. With money raised through donations from an Edmonton church initiated by an email sent to his parish by Cpl. Brian Sanders, the base ambulance- driver Namitullah had been sent for treatment to a hospital in Lahore, Pakistan. The youngster had appeared here last month brought to the gates of the camp by his desperate grandfather, Taj Mohammed with a grotesque tumour on his cheek and neck, diagnosed by Norbash as in the late stages of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. At that time, the objective had been simply to secure for the boy palliative treatment for the few short weeks he likely had left to live. Yet a first course of aggressive chemotherapy in Lahore seemed to have produced, well, a miracle the tumour shrinking extraordinarily, although Namitullah still suffered from secondary cancer tumours in the abdomen. It had been hoped, however, that those tumours would also respond to chemo. And he had looked so well, compared to before, certainly more animated and responsive. He could eat, he could speak, there was no fever. On Wednesday, however, the child began to run a fever. Yesterday morning, his grandfather a veteran of 30 years of fighting, a mujahideen who'd taken on first the invading Soviets and then the Taliban contacted Norbash to say the youngster appeared to be failing. A car and driver were dispatched to Namitullah's village on the outskirts of Kandahar, returning to base with the child, grandfather and a sobbing uncle. The boy, with no apparent vital signs, was given immediate CPR and put on a cardiac monitor. "He had no pulse, he wasn't breathing and there was no electrical activity in the heart,'' Norbash said in an interview late last night. "He was beyond anything we could do for him.'' This is not how the uplifting story of one small Afghan child was supposed to end. But Norbash said he'd cautioned others earlier, not to be so optimistic about Namitullah's condition, even though his particular cancer, a rare form of lymphoma, has a 60 to 70 per cent survival rate if treated, even at an advanced stage. Norbash said he'd taken those statistics with a grain of salt. "They're based on a patient population in the First World. I'd always kept in my mind that this 60 per cent didn't apply to Namitullah. I'm afraid I never shared the exuberance of others.'' When infection and fever set in, Namitullah didn't have the strength to fight back, his immune system further weakened by the chemotherapy. This sad outcome came as a wicked blow, most particularly, to Sanders, who'd been so moved by the child and even been made the boy's godfather. "When he came back from Pakistan, our hopes were raised so much.' After Namitullah had been officially declared dead, Sanders sat outside with the boy's grandfather. The older man was grieving but he was also stoical. He told Sanders he'd seen a lot of death and tragedy. "But it's fate and everyone dies.'' Today, Sanders was hoping to see and console Namitullah's family. Yesterday's prompt funeral and the expenses for the three-day mourning period will be paid out of the fund that had been raised through Sanders' church, with everything left over going towards a local hospital. "At the beginning, we wanted only to ease his suffering,'' said a red- eyed Sanders. "And we succeeded in at least that. The doctor tells me he didn't die in pain. "And he got to ride on an airplane, he got this thing removed from his face. So, no, I won't look at this as a tragedy. It was a success. He was pain-free at the end and that's what we wanted.'' There is one thing further. There are 10,000 families in Namitullah's village, his grandfather said, nearly all of them who viewed these Canadian interlopers in Afghanistan as infidels, whatever else they may have thought of the coalition mission. "They all know that we had helped to reduce Namitullah's pain. And Taj says that now they no longer consider us infidels that we're friends and family. That 6-year-old boy changed the way an entire village looks at us.'' That's a fine legacy for one sweet, darling boy --- End forwarded message --- *************************************************************************** Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia *************************************************************************** __________________________________________________________________________ Mohon Perhatian: 1. Harap tdk. memposting/reply yg menyinggung SARA (kecuali sbg otokritik) 2. Pesan yg akan direply harap dihapus, kecuali yg akan dikomentari. 3. Reading only, http://dear.to/ppi 4. Satu email perhari: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 5. No-email/web only: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 6. kembali menerima email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! 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