The Spirit Of A Woman....

       
        Flashing like lightning on a hot summer night, bright white light more intense than the sun exploded at her feet. Dust from the compound joined thick smoke to fill her lungs and spread slowly around her like venomous bees disturbed from their hive. Suddenly silenced by the explosion, the camp now looked like an old black and white movie. She could not hear the screams but she felt the heat radiating from its core just a few feet from her face, expanding, burning, melting everything it touched. Then, there was nothing.
        Even in concentration camps, a four year old girl wants to play outside. She had been relocated to this place in Germany with her Jewish parents just a month ago and the dusty yard outside was her new playground. The refugee boy had found something buried in the yard and yelled for her to come see. Then, the explosion, and he vanished. Now she was in a room with a doctor and nurses. Her father's face appears, then fades; she cannot hear what he is saying.
       Over half a century passed by. She had adapted well, thanks to her plastic surgery; her hair style and makeup strategically hide the scars. Her husband and children know her story but she looks normal to them.  No one can tell she has only one eye, unless they look closely.
       Until this year she has been able to see well enough. Doctors in Hitler's Germany in 1942 had no technology to repair the damage to her only eye so rather than risk making it worse, they had simply left it alone, hoping it would heal enough for her to get by. They were right. But now she can no longer read. The faces of her family are slowly fading like her father's did over fifty years ago.
       Seated in my exam chair, Hanna was prim and proper, like Mary Poppins with a German accent. And I liked her from the start. "Good morning, doctor." She spoke with a slight smile, her posture perfect, her etiquette formal, and her tone determined. "I have been researching my problem. I think it is time for surgery on my eye."
       I sat transfixed as she recalled to me her childhood memory of the concentration camp in Nazi Germany and described the land-mine blowing up, her injuries, and her family's immigration to America. "And I want you to do it."

        My schedule now falling apart but humbled by her request, I carefully examined her eye. Flash burns and random scars covered her cornea like raindrops on a dirty windshield. Through this I could barely see a couple of traumatic holes in her iris, and her aging cataract which had progressed to make her vision even worse. It was ready to come out. But the challenges were obvious. Could the eye tolerate more trauma from surgery and could I work around the scars and see well enough through them to fix her problem? There were risks, but she had been putting this off until technology progressed to repair her injuries. Five decades was long enough and she was determined to do it now.
       At surgery, I proceeded with my incisions, and began to emulsify the cataractous lens with the ultrasound device. My view was limited by her scars but by using plenty of irrigation fluid I was able to make steady progress. Then without warning, a piece of hard plastic appeared in the front chamber of her eye. With microforceps, I grasped it and removed it from the eye.
       In my forceps was now a piece of history, a fragment of a bombshell from Hitler's Germany, a remnant of the chaos of WWII. Trying to control my excitement at the significance of this surprising find, I placed it in a clear plastic specimen cup and closed the lid. 
      The next morning, Hanna's gratitude for restoring her vision gleamed in her eye. Somehow, despite the scars and the trauma, she could read again. She reached to clasp my hand. And I showed her the contents of the specimen cup while trying to understand what was going through her mind.

      "I want you to have it.", she responded decisively.

      I had hoped she would say that. Now, the fragment sits quietly on a shelf in my home. It is a reminder of how much technological progress we have made, but more importantly, it is a symbol of the resiliency of our human condition, the triumph of good over evil, and the spirit of a woman who would never give up.