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WAR AT HOME
Bay Area doctors aid wounded Gaza boy |
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Irvine, Calif. (May 18, 2004) - As printed in the San Francisco Chronicle
WAR AT HOME
Bay Area doctors aid wounded Gaza boy
Alan Gathright, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, May 15, 2004
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Halfway around the world from his war-torn Gaza home, 14-year-old Mohammed Shbeir sat in an antiseptic San Jose medical clinic Friday, amazed by the news that he will someday ride a bicycle again.
His unintended journey began last spring, when the Palestinian boy hopped on his bike to ride a few short blocks for a haircut. But as Mohammed pedaled his bike down a road, an Israeli Apache helicopter targeting a nearby car fired a missile that rained deadly shrapnel down on his Gaza City neighborhood.
Mohammed, who can't recall what happened, lost his lower left leg and suffered major head injuries as neighbors, including another boy, died.
Now, after a half-dozen operations in his homeland, the boy has come to San Jose to be fitted for an artificial limb. An Ohio charity, the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, paid for the boy and his mother, who had never been outside Gaza, to come to the United States, where medical providers are donating their care for Mohammed and his new custom-made artificial leg. Afterward, he'll fly to Boston for surgery to have shrapnel removed from his head and his skull reconstructed.
The process began Friday, when San Jose prosthetics specialist Michael Dodd started measuring Mohammed for his new state-of-the art leg and foot, donated by Freedom Innovations of Irvine.
As Mohammed quietly sat in a wheelchair, Dodd marked blue pencil "landmarks" on a nylon stocking to make a plaster cast for fashioning the plastic and carbon-fiber leg socket.
"We have to use as much of the upper leg as possible -- and still allow his knee to bend -- to help keep it on,'' the Irish-born Dodd explained in a soft brogue to interpreter Moaid Laymoun, a Santa Clara engineer who's hosting the boy and his mother.
Dodd asked Mohammed to pick a skin tone for his new leg from color samples, saying: "When he's out running in the fields, playing soccer, we want him to look well.'' The boy chose skin tone No. 7.
Mohammed's attention perked up when Dodd said the boy would be able to try standing on his new prosthetic next week and take it home for test strides. "We want to have him walking independently if we can by the time he leaves,'' Dodd adds.
When a reporter asks whether he's ready to walk, Mohammed says: "I want to run.''
Indeed, arriving that morning in the car, the boy was so eager for mobility he hopped around on one leg, too impatient to wait for the wheelchair to be unloaded from the trunk.
Mohammed has made amazing progress, said Dr. Basil Hantash, a Stanford dermatology resident who first met the boy in a Gaza hospital last summer while volunteering on a medical mission for the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund. It was only a month after the missile attack, and Mohammed, gripped by post-traumatic stress, began weeping uncontrollably.
"His mother was there, and watching her watch her son suffer was quite traumatic,'' Hantash recalled.
"When I originally saw him, he was at least 20 pounds lighter in weight, and since he's arrived in the United States, he's gained a lot of weight, and emotionally he's a little bit more stable,'' the doctor said. "He's able to discuss what happened without falling into tears at this point. It's a step in the right direction.''
But the boy, who has suffered permanent memory loss, still has shrapnel protruding from his head and a loss of skull bone that is critical to shielding his brain. In Boston, a volunteer brain surgeon will use a synthetic bone graft to reconstruct his skull.
E-mail Alan Gathright at agathright@sfchronicle.com .
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