Orlando Surgeon Restores Wounded Iraqi Girl's Sight
The retinas -- the film that lines the back of the eyes -- looked like old, peeling wallpaper. Each was riddled with dozens of gray metal fragments that had shot into 3-year-old Alaa Abd's eyes when an American tank shell hit her home in May in western Iraq's Al Anbar province. Alaa, who was at a tea party with family, was blinded by the blast, which also riddled her flesh with shrapnel from head to toe, rending her belly open.
She was lucky. Two of her young brothers and three cousins were killed. But Iraqi doctors were so certain that Alaa would die, too, they refused to treat her at first. But she lived, and a band of volunteers assembled by an Orlando law student, Ashley Severance, brought the child to Orlando.
She arrived a few days after Thanksgiving for a chance to get her vision back. Shaikh, a surgeon with Central Florida Retina, said he had never seen anything like it when he got a close look at the damage. Leading eye surgeons with whom he consulted warned the metal fragments would literally rust in the viscous fluid of Alaa's eyes. The fluid should be clear - hers was brown with rust. And it was toxic, destroying tissue.
Shaikh, who volunteered his time, was undaunted. In December, he carefully removed the fragments - metal bits thinner than a strand of hair - one at a time with tiny surgical instruments. At first, he carefully scraped them off the outer eye, then he slowly worked inward until he reached the most delicate part, the retina. Shrapnel shards were stabbed deep into the tissue. When he would remove one, it would leave a hole that had to be sealed using a laser.
It took two surgeries - 10 hours over two days - and a handful of volunteer medical staff to do the job. "My hands don't shake," Shaikh said. "But God helped me out. I only had two OR (operating room) days."
No one was sure if Alaa (pronounced Ah-LAH) would ever see again - not those who brought the girl to Orlando, and not her father, Khalid Hamdan Abd, an Iraqi carpenter who came with Alaa to a country that he regarded simply as the bringer of the bombs. But when Shaikh and his wife, ophthalmologist Dr. Naazli Shaikh, put thick eyeglasses on the child recently, they knew.
"All of a sudden, eyes that had no lenses could focus," Saad Shaihk said. "She literally reached for some blocks and started playing." Naazli Shaihk said most children Alaa's age would have pulled the glasses right off. "For a second, it looked like she was about to.
"But then something just clicked," Shaihk said. "She kept putting one block on top of an another." The girl's father cried tears of joy.
"We thank God and praise him," Abd said through an interpreter from the University of Central Florida's Muslim Student Association. "We hope that, one day, she will see well enough to read and write." Abd also praised the kindness of Saad Shaikh, the Ronald McDonald House of Orlando, which gave the family a place to stay, and most of all Severance, who made it all happen
She had learned of Alaa's plight on an Internet site, NoMoreVictims.org, and knew immediately something had to be done. "I have a daughter her age," Severance said. "There was no way that I could walk away."
Severance spent countless hours calling doctors and navigating U.S. red tape and international law to get Alaa out of Iraq on a special visa. The extent of damage to the child's vision isn't known yet because her eyes are still healing and her brain must get used to using her eyes again, Saad Shaikh said.
Her left eye had more extensive damage, and it isn't clear how much, if at all, she can see from it. "She has an excellent chance of having good vision, and a chance for a normal life," the doctor said.
Alaa's next step is to travel to Los Angeles for surgery to repair her abdomen from the bomb blast. Abd said he has no plans to remain permanently in America. He wants to return home to help rebuild his country, whether he finds it "like heaven or like hell."
But for his new friends here, he offered "the utmost thanks that I can give."
