Wednesday 13 August 2014

Sersung - A little girl


This is Sersung Selden. A pretty name for a pretty little girl. I met her at Mongar referral hospital, where my father was undergoing herniography. I will tell you why she touched my heart. 

She is three years old but she is unlike any three year old I have ever met. Forget about walking or even sitting, her tiny shoulders can't even support the weight of her head. And it's not a birth defect as you would assume. 

When she was born, she was a super healthy baby weighing 5.2 kilos. And because she weighed so much, it was an extremely difficult birth. In fact it came to a point where either the mother or the child could only be saved. The nurses assumed that it would be better for the mother to live rather than the child and she was extracted from her mother with force, which shattered her collar bones. 

Would this have happened if she had been in a medically advanced country? The answer is simple: NO! Whose fault is it that a perfectly normal child wouldn't ever walk, run, dance, play...... It makes me so mad that these things are happening in our country but more than that because of the fact that I can't do anything about it. 

She never cries. She just lies there watching and cooing and smiling. It's amazing because she's such a happy child that you can't help but smile with her. But it also brought tears to my eyes watching her lie there knowing that her life could have been perfect.