- I expected to work with, you know,
our military folks and our allies and taking care of them.
Not in a thousand years did I expect that I would
help a child learn to walk again.
- A little six year old girl with a gunshot
wound in the tibia, which is below the knee.
I have a seven year old little girl
so that kind of resonated with me
but I think anybody would, you know, geez.
You come here expecting to see war trauma,
I don't know that I was geared up necessarily
to see trauma on a six year old.
I guess I should have thought that could happen,
I just hadn't.
Wrapping my mind around that was a little bit.
They brought her to us to try to either save the leg
or save her life.
I mean, step one, save their life.
So stop the bleeding, prevent infection,
then figure out what you can salvage from there.
I think we tried to take muscle from her back
and tie it into an artery, taking the artery with it,
tying it into an artery on her leg
and unfortunately that was unsuccessful.
That was a low point, that was tough just to live with
and of course everybody around,
Well she's a child, pediatric. Those vessels are so small,
anybody could have it happen. It was a high energy wound.
But none of that really helps ya,
you're just laying in bed going what did I do wrong
to not make that work?
There were three guys that I called on back home,
but, I mean, the calls were coming from me
at one in the morning going,
"What would you do in this scenario?"
And they're like "Wait, wait, who are you again?"
at one in the morning, but yeah,
it was very helpful and I've,
you know, I've tried to tell those guys thank you.
- I think she was still a little scared,
a little nervous, just the new people,
new faces, she had never seen us before
so she was very quiet, wasn't as active as she is now
and didn't speak much, didn't know any English at all
when she first arrived here.
Now, she knows so much English,
she has her own little personality, it has come out.
She put our names on her arm in henna
and she had it all over,
and so when I came in to work that night
she was so excited, she was "Amanda, Amanda, come see.
"Look at my arm."
And she showed me her arm and she was just
so proud to have our names on her arm,
it was amazing.
But even before she had the henna,
she would kinda pretend that the markers were henna,
and she'd grab our hands and grab my hand
and do little decorations on my hand
and it was just too cute.
- Initially, you know, every time I came to see her
she would immediately hide and start crying
and worrying about what I was going to do.
And now she sees me and she's like "Are we gonna walk?"
And she's ready to exercise and she knows
kinda what to expect.
- I just asked one of the nurses that was taking
care of her, "Thank you so much for what you do
"and how you spend all your time with her,
"I know it must be tiring helping doing
"all the dressing changes and carrying her
"and diaper changes for awhile
"and getting her in and out of the wheelchair for awhile."
And they're like "No, man, it's made the deployment
"great, I just hate to see her go."
So I think everybody has had a blessing here from her.
- The opportunity that it's given me to serve
but also grow and be challenged in a different way,
it's helped me really stay connected with my family
as far as, you know, when I go and work with her,
I see any one of my children.
And to know that, you know, if it were one of my
children in that situation, I'd want whoever was
working with them to give everything that they had
to make sure that they could have a life again.
- Having lost her folks, her parents,
not having a dowry for a marriage some day,
not really having her parents to raise her
and then being a female in this culture
can be a challenge in and of itself.
So add that, no parents, and a situation where, you know,
she's gonna be living with in-laws, aunt and uncles,
it's a tough situation.
And even they were coming to me,
expressing that if she were to lose her leg
that it would be especially difficult for her
here in Afghanistan.