Lina, 26, lives in Gaza. Like any other busy 26-year-old, she was grabbing lunch with her sister and cousin at a café during a break from her work as an English teacher.
All of a sudden, she felt a pulsating buzz in her ear followed by a burning sensation all over her body. She couldn’t open her eyes.
“I fell to the ground then after two minutes I heard people approaching. The sad part that with all this I stayed conscious until I arrived here (at UK-Med T2). I wish I wasn’t awake.”
Lina knew something serious had happened but was yet to discover the extent. Her first thought was for her sister; what was her fate and where could she be?
After an ambulance delivered Lina to the UK-Med field hospital in Al-Mawasi, the doctors asked her name, but she couldn’t remember much. Somehow, despite the pain, she was still conscious. Her entire body was wrapped in bandages, even her eyes were covered.
“I heard them saying we’ll lose her, let’s hurry up.”
Her surgeries were numerous, and she recalls having to go back into the operating theatre day after day after day. Her family didn’t hold out much hope about her condition.
But thanks to our specialist team and surgeon, Dr Allan Cortes, three of four limbs were successfully rescued, with Lina only having to undergo one amputation. A small mercy given the state she arrived at the hospital, where she explains that even drinking water or moving a toe was impossible. Now, she can sit and move her body and credits the team for her road to recovery:
“They were giving me daily updates about my injuries. Trying their best to make me laugh (…) like a close family, and lovely friends.”
Yet, justifiably Lina is clouded with whys: why she reached this point, why she lost her leg, why she lost her eye, why she lost many, many things – and why she lost her sister for no reason.
Rather being discharged to her house in Rafah with a garden full of all sorts of trees, she will be forced to live in a tent on the sand. Holding on to her dreams helps but she worries the conflict is an endless situation:
“I need to treat my eye to see again and my right hand that I do everything with (I draw, I write, I teach). I need to be back to life, I’m unstoppable.”
