Life lesson from a little girl who was given up for dead

APRIL 5 — She didn’t deserve this; abandoned, motherless, fatherless, orphaned, sick and alone, but these were the circumstances she was dealt. 

More than six months old and just under three kilogrammes she was barely breathing when she arrived at the emergency room, having been denied admission at the previous hospital because it was clear she was not going to survive whatever was sucking the life from her.

Little was known about the tiny baby gasping for breath except that she had come from an orphanage where her health had deteriorated rapidly. 

We knew a few things; she had been born with a few genetic abnormalities which could be repaired, and had a heart condition that was not especially serious, none of these things explained why she was suddenly so ill.

From the emergency room to the ICU, life continued but she was far from stable.

The next few days’ tests would confirm that she was one of the countless unlucky ones, she was one of the babies who had been drinking milk tainted with melamine. 

Perhaps for some of the babies this was survivable, but tests also showed that she only had one working kidney, and the melamine had caused stones to build up in the other kidney, which is what led to her rapid deterioration. No one really knew if she would live, most didn’t expect she would, as infection and other issues ravaged her body.

I remember those first few weeks she spent in the hospital. I remember the nearly daily journey by bike, subway and bus to get to her bedside to see how she was. 

I remember when she made progress, two steps forward three steps back. And I remember the day she was discharged to me; still tiny, now none months old and skin and bones.

She came home with a tube in her nose to feed her every two hours even through the night, an IV which required twice daily injections and little will to live.

But live she did. It was not an easy fight, not for her and not for any of us who fought with her. Her first three years were filled with more hospitalisations than most have had in a lifetime, more surgeries than I can even remember, more bad days than good, and more days of heartache than I could imagine.

Still, somehow, she learned to smile, she learned to laugh, she radiated life even when most of us would be whining and complaining.

She was my daughter for more than five years, and I loved her, I still do. Some days when nothing else could make me smile, she could.

Last week I watched her run around a playground and laugh with her older sister and another one of my foster daughters. She turned eight last month and was adopted into an amazing family where she is loved unconditionally, much as she loves unconditionally.

She is not normal, in the normal sense of the word, on the normal scale in which we give children. She still has many challenges, many disabilities, many ongoing medical issues but she is beautiful and if normal is our baseline for judging others, I would like to be abnormal like her.

She radiates love and laughter and joy. She didn’t seem to care much for me when I first saw her again, after several years, but at some point she suddenly seemed to remember me and unlike some of my other kids who have joined families, she welcomed me with open arms and an open heart. 

She wanted me to hold her hand in the car, and sit with her during our meal, and when our time together was over, her eyes were wet with tears. It was perhaps her tears that hit me the most, for tears are not her normal.

I haven’t always had the opportunity to see my foster kids grow up. Many of them went from my arms back to God’s. But when I see my kids, growing, thriving, living, my heart sings. 

For the ones who have moved on to families many I get to watch from afar as they live the childhood each of them deserves, though many of them not without their struggles and ongoing need for medical interventions.

There are moments when I cry private tears when I think back on the pieces of my heart spread across the world and mourn my own loss; but my loss has been someone else’s gain, either heaven’s or their families.

I miss each of them. I have each of their names written forever on my heart but hers is in capital letters; hers, though I have loved each of my kids, will always hold a special place, partly simply because she was mine longer than any of the others, and partly because she made me smile when I didn’t think there was anything to be smiling about.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.