Just another day in Iraq

I'm really struggling to find the words to explain today. It's late here (almost 3 am) so this could either be beneficial (as I do consider myself to be a night person) or detrimental (since I can honestly say I'm considerably tired).

But I guess first I have to back up to last night... a young woman and her husband came to dinner. This is the couple who lost their 6 month-old daughter, Honyar, after her heart surgery. The Courtney's know the language here incredibly well, but were so wise to ask their interpreter and friend to also be here - just to be extra careful to get it right.

She is a stranger. She is from another generation. She is from another culture. We have nothing in common, with the exception of one thing.... the pain, the chaos, the desperation, the emptiness of losing a child. I hope that the time we spent together was helpful for her. It was for me.

Maybe later I will be able to write about this night in more depth. Tonight, the words escape me.

It almost seems disrespectful to move on from here, but I cannot sign off without telling you about today.

It began with a trip to the local hospital here. This is a place where the children are often diagnosed, where heart tests are done, but nothing is fixed. There is no surgeon here, no machinery to do what needs to be done. There are 5 kids per room, each waiting for something. For many, that something is simply the right prescription, a few stitches or an antibiotic. But for others, what they are waiting for will never come because they need heart surgery. Heart surgery that is being done routinely in the states and in other parts of the world. But not here.

The cardiologist here is a kind man who works tirelessly, but I am sure he gets discouraged every time he says, "I'm sorry. There is nothing I can do. Your child needs surgery or they will die." He showed us into the "ICU" (admitting that it is this because there are only 3 beds instead of the standard 5 per room, and it is a little bit cleaner than a regular room).

There was only one baby in this room. His mother was holding him, and he was a familiar shade of blue. Even half-way around the world, there was so much that was familiar to me: the mom, alone with her baby, holding him gently and watching between the baby, the monitor and the doctor - her eyes going from one to the other; her supplies set up neatly on the bed, within reach; the puls-ox monitor clipped onto the baby's toe registering heart rate and oxygen saturation levels; the steady blinking and beeping of the monitors; and this I couldn't actually see, but I could feel it: the agony of knowing that your child needs something that you are completely unable to give him, and the total vulnerability and desperation of wanting and needing someone to do something to make it all better.

Speaking in English (the mother could not understand) the cardiologist said, "This baby needs heart surgery, but there is no way to do it here. We are waiting for him to die."

And I just stood there. Staring. Staring at this mother, wanting to tell her it would be OK, wanting to make it better, wanting to fulfill that little bit of hope she still had for a miracle.

But I didn't speak a word of her language and even if I did, I had nothing to say. Nothing. I had no hope for her. I didn't even offer her a hug. I simply turned and walked away. What can I do for her anyway?... I'm not a pediatric heart surgeon. And her son is one of many... too many.

So I left. I walked away from the monitors and the beeping and blinking. I walked away from the medical supplies and the nurses. I walked away from the waiting and the desperation.

I left that mother to be alone and to wait for her baby to die.