Iraqi teen recovers from election day shooting
Seventeen-year-old girl loses right eye
By Arwa Damon
CNN
MOQTADIYE, Iraq (CNN) -- Seventeen-year-old Tissan Abdulla will be reminded of January 30 every time she looks in the mirror.
While Iraqis at the polls celebrated their nation's historic elections, she was lying on a surgical litter at a U.S. medical facility in Moqtadiye, a town about 45 kilometers, or 28 miles, northeast of Baquba. There, American medics battled successfully to save her life -- but she lost her right eye.
A stray bullet, thought to have been fired by insurgents who were attacking a polling site close to her home, hit Tissan. The U.S. military says that polling site was attacked four times on the morning of elections.
More than 40 people died in election day violence in Iraq.
Tissan's father, Khaled Abdulla, says his daughter was sweeping in the courtyard of her home in the sleepy village of Al-Bosool, 5 kilometers west of Moqtadiye, when he heard heavy gunfire followed by his daughter's piercing shrieks. The family rushed to the garden and saw Tissan on the ground holding her eye and screaming and crying.
Her mother, Fathiye, remembers, "I tried to pick her up. I was shouting. There was very little blood."
"I didn't know what to do," her father said. "When you see your child hit, you don't know what to do."
Her father, a long-retired Iraqi soldier-turned farmer, her 26-year-old brother, and her uncle sped away with the teenager to the Iraqi Army checkpoint a couple of hundred meters from their home. There, because of election security, U.S. soldiers with Alpha Company of Task Force 2-2, 1st Infantry Division, had set up a forward position that also included ambulances and medics.
The medics treated Tissan immediately on site, bandaging her eye. She was still aware and talking. But in the 15-minute trip to the U.S. military base, she lost consciousness.
"She had some respirations, but she was not responding to stimuli," said Maj. Lisa Dewitt, an emergency physician with the Florida National Guard who received her at the base. "We stabilized her and rolled her over to make sure there were no other bullet holes."
During the procedure, Dewitt realized the bullet that hit Tissan was lodged in the back of her neck. The bullet had penetrated through the right corner of her right eye, going through the eyeball and eye socket.
Because she needed help breathing, Dewitt put a tube down Tissan's throat.
"I have done at least 1,000 intubations, and this was the hardest of my career," Dewitt said. "Her throat, because of the damage done to her neck, was swelling. I could see through the scope going down her throat that the passage was getting smaller, and her oxygen started to drop. We began mask ventilation. Her heart rate started to drop. I thought that we had lost her.
"I don't usually sweat, but look at me here, see how I was sweating?" she said, pointing to photographs of the procedure that showed her shirt covered in dark stains. "It was a great save."
Tissan was flown by helicopter to another U.S. facility where surgeons removed her eye. A CAT scan showed no injury to her brain. She woke up 48 hours later.
But the tough times were not over for her worried family.
Because of the travel ban on election day, her father was not able to travel to the U.S. medical facility in Balad where Tissan was taken. When he finally arrived at Forward Operating Base Anaconda in Balad, despite a memo from Dewitt explaining the situation, he was not allowed onto the base.
"The military does not have a system for Iraqis who have family members in the hospital to be allowed onto the FOB," Dewitt said. It would take another five days and numerous phone calls to coordinate an escort before her family would be able to see Tissan at the base, more than an hour's drive away from their home.
Back in Moqtadiye, less than two weeks after the incident, the teenager shuffled slowly into the local Ministry of Health office with her parents to be checked one last time by Dewitt.
Tissan can barely speak, and her mother says that she is short of breath at night.
Dewitt lightly folded back the brown lace shawl covering the girl's forehead and hair and slowly removed the bandage.
Abdulla's mother looked away.
"I could not bear to see the wound. This is the first time," she said softly as she timidly peered at her daughter's disfigured face.
Dewitt said the wound is healing well; there is no scarring around the eye socket. Abdulla may be over the worst of it, but she will need to travel to Baghdad for more treatment and a prosthetic eye.
Dewitt said that Abdulla's parents were concerned about their daughter's eye and permanent disfiguration.
"Once you get the prosthetic, you'll be beautiful again," Dewitt tried to reassure her and her parents.
