Woman This Month - February 2015

48 February 2015 www.womanthismonth.com LIFESTYLE | parenting "One hundred years from now, It won't matter what car I drove, What kind of house I lived in, How much I had in my bank account, Nor what my clothes looked like, But, the world may be a little better Because I was important in the life of a child." – Anonymous. Dr Jinan Harith Darwish pays tribute to one of her cystic fibrosis patients. Tu Me Manques The abrupt course of respiratory failure that led to the demise of Sukaina Hamed Fadhul on December 2, 2014, during her last admission to Salmaniya Medical Complex a fortnight after she celebrated her 14th birthday, urged me to pay tribute to her and to her two siblings who lost their lives to cystic fibrosis (CF) at the ages of 26 days and 14 years respectively. The Fadhul family became accustomed to having their children surrounded by medical paraphernalia, using bizarre-looking flutter devices and taking an array of nebulisers and medications. Sukaina had great hope to go abroad to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London for advanced medical care and an ultimate lung transplant, so she could grow to become a lung transplant surgeon and cure people who share her disease. One cruel twist is that CF can be a lonely and solitary condition as CFers are advised not to meet face-to-face for fear of making themselves more ill from crossinfection (different people can carry different bacteria). It means they cannot socialise easily or give each other regular support; therefore she reverted to utilising social media through her Instagram account to communicate with

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