‘He saved our daughter’s life ... he’s become a family member’
Dr Adib Khanafer has been reunited with the young girl who he treated following the March 15 shootings. By Oliver Lewis.
WHEN vascular surgeon Dr Adib Khanafer met the girl whose life he helped save following the March 15 terror attack, he asked what she wanted to be when she grew up.
‘‘I said, ‘are you going to be a doctor?’ and she said, ‘no, I’m going to be a policewoman’.’’
The answer surprised him. ‘‘We have not impressed her enough.’’
Khanafer, who goes by Eddie, once described the surgery he performed on the girl, who was shot three times in the attack on two Christchurch mosques, as the highlight of his career. The girl, who has name suppression, was resuscitated following 14 minutes of CPR before Khanafer performed surgery to treat major vein damage and injured arteries. She was 4 at the time.
It was a team effort, he says, and a remarkable outcome. On the first anniversary of the attack, he made it clear that little had changed for him professionally. What had come out of the horror of that day is a rare emotional connection with the young girl and her family.
As a surgeon, emotion is a distraction; the aim is professional detachment. But this case is different. Khanafer is a Muslim and a father of four. He was born and grew up in Kuwait and shared a similar cultural background to the girl’s father, who was also shot in the attack. Sunday News cannot name the man, either, as it could identify his daughter.
When the pair returned to Christchurch, after months of treatment and surgeries in Auckland, the family met with Khanafer at a cafe near Christchurch Hospital. ‘‘I did definitely shed some tears and cried,’’ Khanafer said. ‘‘But with her I was very happy to see her. I just laughed and smiled.’’
After their meeting, the father went with his daughter to the emergency department. She was lifeless when they went in on March 15, and he wanted to walk her out alive. That day last August, she left in a wheelchair.
‘‘I’m planning to do it again when she’s able to walk on her feet,’’ he said. ‘‘I want her to walk by herself because she was completely dead when she went in.’’
When asked why he wanted to see Khanafer, he said: ‘‘He saved our daughter’s life, pretty much. And he’s become a family member after that.’’
He also praised paediatric surgeon Dr Kiki Maoate. He and Khanafer had both treated the family like friends, he said.
After their initial reunion, Khanafer accepted an invitation to have dinner with the family at their home.
For them, the anniversary of the shootings means little. Both the man and his daughter require further operations. She can walk, but it is exhausting, so she mainly uses a wheelchair.
‘‘We’re still going through it,’’ her father said. ‘‘It’s not finished to be thinking about the past. We’re still living the pain. We’re still living everything. A lot of people have moved on, but we haven’t moved on, yet. We’re still struggling.’’
Canterbury District Health Board chief executive David Meates said 1970 treatments (ED admissions, inpatient admissions, surgeries and outpatient appointments) were required for 114 people after the mosque attacks, and many people are receiving complex, ongoing care in their own homes.
Khanafer treated those injured in the shootings but said he had not let it affect him emotionally. ‘‘You are trained to keep emotion aside, and to deal with the situation. If you’re asking, ‘does it have an effect on us?’, possibly not, in the sense that this is at the end of the day what we do as surgeons.’’
He has, however, reflected on the attacks in the context of training surgeons. He said some surgeons avoid particularly complex elective work because of the risk of patients dying. He was well placed to treat the girl because he was used to doing complex surgeries, he said, a point he wanted to pass on.
Khanafer will not be marking the first anniversary of the attacks – doing so is not consistent with his culture – but he remained immensely proud of the work he and others did to save the girl’s life.
‘‘There’s no doubt it’s a horrific event, but as a surgeon, to save a child who was 4 years old, who had been down for 14 minutes, who had injury on the most sensitive part in your body, with a more than 90 per cent you’re going to die, and you make it, and you make it well, and almost no disability, to me, that is absolutely remarkable.’’