Local Editor
Hella Hultin is a surgeon from Sweden. She has recently returned from her assignment with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Khameer, Yemen. Here she blogs about her final day on assignment, and a tiny patient who is close to her heart.
Today I discharged the three-year-old girl we operated on for intestinal obstruction.
She has had a really complicated course of the disease, affecting her bowel function and lungs.
The long time she'd spent in intensive care made her lethargic and weak, and it took her a while to get her appetite back. Moving out of the ICU improved the situation, but it was hard to get her to walk by herself and start playing again.
So many new people I got to know, so many life stories to tell
She still screams when she sees me, as I'm usually the one who hurts her.
Her mother and I are friends, however, and she understands how important it is for her daughter to get back to normal again.
Today I managed to get a picture of her where she wasn't crying, and it feels like a victory to get to wave goodbye to her and her mother.
"I managed to get a picture of her where she wasn't crying
It is also time for me to go home. Tomorrow I'm working my last day in Khameer.
A month in Yemen has felt very long and at the same time it has disappeared instantly - so much has happened!
So many new people I got to know, so many life stories to tell.
I'm returning to Sweden where it is clinically clean, with our senseless waste of everything there is a desperate lack of in Yemen - water, electricity, food, medical supplies of all kinds. It feels unreal.
I know that for several weeks ahead I will jump every time there is a loud sound and get palpitations when I hear aircraft noise, but I also know that it will pass.
I can only sincerely wish that in time it will be the same for the people of Yemen.
Source: MSF, Edited by Website Team
