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Thank you all
Posted on 12/15/2005 8:13:44 PM PST by paulat
Alive - after 63 days under rubble
December 16, 2005
MOST of her muscles are withered, she cannot speak and she is mentally damaged but doctors believe a Kashmiri women who survived 63 days under freezing rubble after Pakistan's deadly earthquake will live.
Naqsha Bibi, reduced to a skeleton, lies on a hospital bed in the intensive care unit set up by the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association in Muzaffarabad, the capital of quake-ravaged Pakistani Kashmir. Her two brothers and father, injured in the October 8 earthquake, were flown to a hospital in Rawalpindi near the capital Islamabad where they are under treatment.
"We were injured and were brought to a hospital in Rawalpindi by a helicopter and we had thought all along that our sister is no more," one brother, Jamilur Rehman, said.
Ms Bibi looks a virtual corpse lying on her bed in the field hospital but doctors believe she has every chance of recovering. "She has survived for 63 days under the rubble and it was nothing short of a miracle," said Dr Riaz Ahmed. "We are hopeful she will survive. She is recovering well. She is in a psychological trauma. She sometime smiles at us and she strives to utter a word but she cannot speak. We are watching her," Dr Ahmed said.
Ms Bibi migrated from Kupwara in Indian Kashmir in the early 1990s with thousands of other refugees. She had been living since then in the Kamsar refugee camp, which was destroyed by the earthquake.
Locals said they were digging into the rubble at the camp last Sunday to recover corrugated iron sheets and belongings when they saw a body in a cavity.
"When I pressed a stick into the body I saw slight movement and realised that this person may be alive," said 28-year-old Abdul Qayyum.
The people tried to give her water and food but she could not swallow anything, Mr Qayyum said. On Monday morning a German doctor, Holger Barochmeyer, who was vaccinating people in a nearby village was informed and he immediately advised shifting her to the hospital.
"She was just skin and bones when she was brought here," Mr Ahmed said. "Her jaw was tightly shut and we could not even take her temperature as the thermometer would not stay under the armpit due to wasted muscles."
Another doctor at the field hospital, Hafeezur Rehman, said more than 80 per cent of Ms Bibi's muscles were wasted. "The body is very stiff and there is no flexibility."
After physiotherapy there were signs of improvement and she started taking some liquids. "Now we have started giving her solid meals as well," he said.
Dr Barochmeyer, who works for the private medical group Caritas, said he was very happy to hear the woman was improving and getting full medical treatment. "She must have had access to water and food during the time she was under the rubble, otherwise it was not possible to survive without water and food for such a long time," he said.
Out of the 400 residents of the refugee camps, nearly 200 were killed in the quake which devastated Pakistani Kashmir and some parts of the North West Frontier Province.
It killed more than 73,000 people in Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir and left an estimated 3.5 million homeless.
Agence France Presse
BTTT
This seems literally impossible. And I'd be deranged too; poor soul.
Thanks, txflake. Unbelieveable story.
Sick or not, it's not possible.
That's because she wasn't there for 63 days. It is sheer impossible that she did not have food and water for 63 days. This is ridiculous speculation. It shows how gullible people are ... to believe this.
OK I'll share:
"Lord God in Heaven, Our Father
For reasons unknown to us Thou hast seen fit to deliver this woman from death under circumstances that we can only speculate upon and view as Miraculous. We know not why, but we defer to Thy wisdom in this matter.
Deliver her therefore from Death, restore her to full health and happiness we pray.
And teach us all the reason why, so that we may be edified and serve Thee better.
And Lord, we thank Thee for this Miracle, given near Christmastime when we celebrate the birth of Thy Son the Lord Jesus Christ Our Savior.
Miracles resore our Faith.
In Jesus Name, Amen."
I can tell YOU'VE never been to Afghanistan. Another spoiled American....
Thank you all
A miracle!
Terri had an incredible will to live. She lasted thirteen days without a drop of water, not even wetted lips. She shrieked when they pulled her tubes. She wanted to live. I was outside the gate when it happened and heard the resulting commotion, was one of the first to talk to the guy running out from the room to tell us what just happened.
Her heart was strong, her constitution was strong, belying any thought she had given up.
8mm
Okay.
Unreal! I hpoe she gets well enough to eat a big ole steak.
Thank you for the PING BG..
What an amazing woman!
Prayers of course.
Woman found alive 63 days after earthquake
(Filed: 14/12/2005)
A woman who had been given up for dead after the earthquake in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir was reported yesterday to have been discovered alive in the rubble of her home, no fewer than 63 days after the disaster struck.
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Relatives said that they had found Naqsha Bibi, 40, in the ruins of what had been her kitchen at the weekend as they sifted through the debris to salvage roofing materials.
They had assumed that she had either been swept away to her death in a river by a landslide or had found shelter at a relief camp in the stricken region.
She was being treated in an intensive care unit last night at a hospital in Muzaffarabad, the regional capital four miles from her home. Doctors said that she weighed less than five stone and 80 per cent of her muscles had withered while she was trapped in a tiny space in which she could only crouch.
She had apparently survived on rainwater and rotting food.
The doctors said that after being put on a liquid diet she had begun to show signs of recovery and yesterday had smiled for the first time since her rescue.
"We were not even looking for her," her cousin, Faiz Din, told the BBC.
"We thought that Naqsha had either fallen down the hill or had gone to live in some relief camp in the city.
"We first thought that she was dead but she opened her eyes as we were pulling her out."
She did not respond to offers of food and water but after being attended to by a Danish doctor she was put on a drip and later taken to hospital.
The earthquake on Oct 8 killed more than 70,000 people in the mountainous area and left about 3.5 million homeless.
"Sick or not, it's not possible."
See post #76.
"Relatives said that they had found Naqsha Bibi, 40, in the ruins of what had been her kitchen at the weekend as they sifted through the debris to salvage roofing materials."
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"She had apparently survived on rainwater and rotting food."
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