“
There is hope” – Heather Heather McNamara of USA is not a celebrity. Still she made a history!
Heather is just a 7-year old lively little girl. In February this year she had to pass through a very complicated
surgery at the New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s hospital to get a baseball sized tumor removed from her abdomen.
To do the surgery, the surgeons had to take out small Heather’s six vital organs – small and large intestines, liver,
pancreas, spleen, and stomach. The surgery is reportedly first of its kind on children and second in general.
Meanwhile after the successful removal of the tumor from Heather’s abdomen, the surgeons re-implanted her liver, small and large intestines but could not re-implant her stomach, pancreas, and spleen as these were so damaged. They had however given Heather a intestinal pouch to hold food and prescribed daily insulin injections and digestive enzymes to compensate the function of the pancreas.
Thanks Heaven! Heather is alive and well too! On the day of her release from the New York hospital recently, little Heather in a press conference together with her parents delivered a very optimistic message to anyone who is sick or has a child who is sick;
‘there is hope”!
Let us bear little Heather’s message in our mind to gain courage for encountering with sickness!
--Professor M Zahidul Haque
Chairman
Department of Agricultural Extension & Information System
Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University
Dhaka-1207.