|
Ten-year-old Adham Ghalia has a shy smile that can light up a room and break your heart. This is despite the fact his left leg has a metal rod in it, not to mention bone fragments and shrapnel.
These days, he's a long way from home in the Middle East and forever removed from the way his life used to be.
Because on June 8, the Ghalia family picnic, held on a stretch of Gaza beach, ended in blood and noise and tears and death.
A mortar exploded on the shore and blew up Adham's family, killing seven of them—his father, his stepmother and five siblings—and injuring seven others. According to news reports at the time, there was some confusion about the circumstances surrounding the explosion. But Israeli defense forces have since apologized for the incident, claiming it was an errant shell fired from an Israeli ship offshore.
Adham Ghalia just wants to get better and return home.
Doctors in Israel did what they could, given that their facilities are more suited to dealing with this kind of trauma than those closer to Adham's home in Gaza. It was not enough though, and hope that he could gain more use of his injured left leg was found in New Jersey where he arrived Oct. 30 at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch.
Adham came here under the auspices of an organization called the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, a charitable organization that has brought nearly a thousand Palestinian children to the United States over the last decade. Nora Whisnant, who heads the New Jersey chapter of the charity, is the boy's legal guardian during his stay in the country. She said someone once asked Adham what he wanted to be when he grew up. He didn't know, he answered, because he wasn't sure if he would grow up.
"There's a lot of reality for this little boy that has to be let in a little bit at a time," said Whisnant of Montgomery Township in Somerset County.
A Touching Meeting
A lot of people who care deeply for Adham recently sat around a large conference room on the first floor of Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch. Adham sat near one end, understanding almost none of what was being said about his life, his dead and injured family members, and his prognosis.
But his eyes were bright. He slowly ate a small bag of potato chips, enjoying each one. He saved a second bag of chips for later, exhibiting the sort of patience that is not generally seen in 10-year-old boys.
When Dr. Andrew Elkwood, the plastic surgeon who performed a nerve transplant on the boy's injured left leg, arrived, he headed straight for Adham with the two high-fiving
each other.
Adham is a Muslim, Elkwood is Jewish, but that doesn't matter here and now.
"All I see here is a 10-year-old boy," he said. "There are no politics in an injured little boy. And when people of many faiths work together, there is nothing better for people of any faith."
Dr. Peter Park, the director of Interventional Radiology, takes it one step further: When doctors go to work, Park said, what they see are a network of blood vessels, bone chips or a tangle of nerves — not the political battles that brought the boy here.
"We couldn't examine Adham's leg in less intrusive ways," Park said. "The shrapnel in his leg meant we couldn't use an MRI, which relies on magnetism. We couldn't do a CT scan, either, and the rod in his leg meant that an ultrasound didn't offer the best images. We finally had to do an angiogram, sending a camera through blood vessels."
Other doctors also worked on Adham, including vascular surgeon Kevin Lopyan, anesthesiologist Waheed A. Eraky — who speaks Arabic and was able to put Adham at ease in the operating room — and Dr. Saad Saad, chief of pediatric surgery at the Children's Hospital at Monmouth Medical Center.
Playing Politics
While politics may have nothing to do with working to heal a little boy, it took some political wrangling to bring Adham across the ocean.
A social worker for the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund visited Adham at home after he was released from the hospital in Israel. The charity then got word to Saad, who
brought Elkwood on board. Then came the long journey to Monmouth County where further healing could finally begin.
There were also difficulties with border crossings and closed embassies. Even the office of Rep. Rush Holt, D-12th Dist., got involved, Whisnant said. But getting to these shores would not have meant a thing if there were not doctors willing to give of themselves.
"As a teaching hospital," said Bill Arnold, CEO of Monmouth Medical Center, "we were able to pull together the resources and expertise that Adham needed. All the doctors got on board."
"He's not out of the woods yet," Elkwood cautions. "There are risks besides just going back home. We worry about bone infection, but we're going to find some way to do follow-up care. Technology allows us to do more than we ever could before."
There are two things Adham wants to see before he goes back home: a zoo and a waterfall. He also wants to run fast one day. The first two are a lot easier to make happen than the last.
Whisnant believes that Adham may have unrealistic expectations about his recovery, and worries about that. On the other hand, there are far more pressing worries. "The day after his surgery was traumatic," she said. "Adham had flashbacks and nightmares."
He's a brave little boy, she said, but he has a lot to face when he goes home.
"There are thousands of other children like Adham around the world in places like Iraq and Palestine," she said.
But for now Adham is surrounded by people who care deeply for him, including his host family.
Suzy and Kahil Mitwally were approached by someone from their mosque, The Islamic Society of Monmouth County, and asked if they could take Adham in through his long recovery, which may last six months.
"We already have four sons ranging in age from 11 to 19," Suzy said. "We said, "One more won't put a dent in anything.' "
She admires all those who have worked so diligently to help Adham.
"I think if we all reached the core beliefs, we would all be the same, and see that our faith demands that we help a little boy," she said.
America may seem strange to the child, but what impresses Adham most about America, Whisnant said, is how quiet it is.
"He says that here, the bombers don't fly overhead every day," Whisnant said.
Of the many miracles that surround Adham, Suzy Mitwally believes, one truly stands out.
"With all that's happened to him, with all that he's been through, he still has that smile," she says.
|
