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Remember this post from Mike Yon?
During one late-night sweep in Isla Zeral, Lt. Dan Kearney entered a house where a man asked for help with his five-year-old daughter. She is five years old and her name is Rhma Taha Ahmed and she is afraid of the soldiers, but the father asks the Americans to slow down and look at his daughter. Rhma hid her face while her dad showed her fingers and toes to Lt. Kearney. Her nails were receded and there was blood-blistering, her fingers and toes were tones of red and purple. SFC Joel Lundak called a medic who checked Rhma's vital signs and said she seemed to have a heart condition.Here's an update from Sandra Jontz in Stars and Stripes:Her father produced papers from a doctor, medical records of a sort, and the interpreter said the documents reported that Rhma has an inoperable congenital heart defect. She will die slowly and painfully. Lt. Kearney calls for Captain Paul Carron, the B company commander, who looks at Rhma and decides to do something. As it happens, a journalist named Sandra Jontz was riding along with Deuce-Four on this mission, and Sandra decides to do something, too. She snaps pictures and takes notes.
Rhma Taha Ahmed might not have to have her hands and feet amputated after all. And she just might live to a ripe old age.The 5-year-old Iraqi girl, who suffers from a congenital heart defect, tapped a soft spot earlier this year in some soldiers from 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment in Mosul.
After an article about the little girl appeared in Stars and Stripes in May, her plight touched off a hailstorm of e-mails across continents which, in less than a month, has prompted a doctor and hospital to perform the surgery and a nonprofit organization to pay all expenses.
The sole sticking point to getting her care in the United States is acquiring non-immigrant visas for the child and her parents, and military personnel are working through official channels to get those.
Once approved, the plan is to bring Rhma to Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, N.M., where Dr. Carl Lagerstrom has agreed to perform the surgery, said Pam English, a hospital employee, who is the mother of one of the 1-24 soldiers.
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The nonprofit organization Healing the Children will pay necessary costs. It pairs children with medical professionals who donate services and link children to volunteers who provide room and board in the United States, according to their Web site, www.healingchildren.org.
Her original Stars and Stripes story is here.
