The night her house was shelled, Fatima Khider Thanoon was asleep in her bed.
“I woke up to the sound of shelling. I wanted to get up, but I couldn’t. I felt that I was paralyzed.”
She smelled gunpower and all around her injured people were screaming, including her.
Their voices couldn’t be heard above the thudding of shells.
“My parents at the beginning didn’t know that we were hurt. They went out to check who was injured and who needed help, but at the same time they didn't know that we were injured,” Fatima says.
When they found her, Fatima’s parents initially thought her paralysis was due to fear. Then a neighbour, a doctor, examined her and saw she needed immediate treatment, so her father and brothers carried her out of the house in a blanket and drove her to a hospital.
“The streets were empty but at the same time there was so much fear; the sound of hovering aircraft. Militants were blocking the roads asking where we were going.”
A life turned upside down
Fatima had been studying to become a teacher, but her plans were placed on hold that night, and, she feared, forever. After being treated at the hospital she returned home and lay immobile and depressed for seven months, convinced she would never walk again.
“When I became handicapped, my life turned upside down. I wasn’t conscious of life around me. When somebody would talk to me I would talk to them, but without focus or concentration,” she says.
But Fatima’s family, especially her four brothers, refused to give up hope.
They encouraged her to stand, again and again, physically holding her up. Each time she would collapse.
“They were telling me that through your will you will be healed, but I didn’t believe any of them. I didn’t believe my family. I didn’t believe my doctor. I didn’t feel that I would ever improve.”
But her brothers’ persistence paid off. One day, for a few fleeting seconds, Fatima stood.
“I was relieved and happy,” she said.
Steps towards recovery
After that breakthrough, it was recommended that she undergo rehabilitation therapy, and she figured she had nothing to lose.
Now, she continues to take tentative steps towards recovery. Every other day her mother brings her to the WHO-supported Ninewah Rehabilitation Hospital in East Mosul.
Even reaching the hospital is a physical ordeal. She walks slowly with the aid of a walker through the hospital compound to the rehabilitation ward. There a therapist works with her to build up her strength. She rides a stationary bicycle and does sit-ups.
Years of conflict destroyed most of the medical facilities in the Mosul, and the hospital is under immense pressure – the rehabilitation unit sees up to 100 patients every day.
“Our time is not enough for the number of people, but we do our best,’ says Dr Maher Alsamaq.
Many patients need prosthetic limbs, and since the hospital doesn’t have a prosthetics unit, WHO support has paid for wheelchairs, and enables patients to be driven to Sulaymaniyah to be fitted for prostheses.
Fatima’s doctors, pleased with her progress, predict that she will make a full recovery and that the life she dreams of will become a reality. As her mobility increases, so does her hope for the future. “I will carry on coming here in the hope that I become better and that I heal,” she says. “I feel an improvement. I feel I can go back to walking. I am in a state of happiness.”
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