A Greater Power: Pocatello doctor participates in a miracle
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POCATELLO — Dr. Fahim Rahim’s training as a nephrologist never involved preparing the solution necessary to save a child’s life or administering it without a dialysis machine. That didn’t stop him.
When Rahim went to Nepal in 2015 to assist with the medical emergency following an earthquake that killed 9,000 people and injured another 22,000, he was there to help people. He had no idea he would have to make moves to save the life of an infant who was less than 2 weeks old who had gone into kidney failure.
Her name is Norbu Lama and it’s amazing she’s alive today.
“Sometimes it’s divine intervention,” Rahim said after embracing the now healthy girl during a return trip to Nepal this month. “One day I’d like to come back to this girl’s wedding.”
It all began as Dr. Rahim was working as a volunteer to help Nepalese who were devastated by a massive earthquake that destroyed homes and killed thousands. He was at a hospital in the Sindhupalchowk District in Nepal and was making the rounds with an intensive care doctor from Rhode Island named Ehsun Mirza.
A desperate mother was worried her infant girl was going to die. The child had suffered from severe dehydration and her kidneys had shut down.
The small rural hospital in Nepal had no equipment to provide dialysis which purifies the blood in a person’s system when the kidneys can’t provide that function. Fahim and the doctor assisting him didn’t let that stop them.
“The girl had little chance of survival,” Rahim said. “People told us to do what you can and we’ll pray for you.”
The volunteer physicians went into action as the girl continued to cling to life on a ventilator.
An emergency call to a doctor in Pakistan provided the key to the formula they would have to put together to cleanse the little girl’s system. It’s a blend of sodium, potassium and calcium with the correct electrolytes to remove toxins and keep someone alive.
“It was amazing that the doctor in Pakistan answered our phone call,” Rahim said.
Once the solution was made, the problem was how to deliver and remove the fluid.
Doctors Rahim and Mirza decided the only way to keep the child alive was to use an intravenous catheter in the child’s abdomen to inject the solution and pull it out so she could continue to survive.
“We used a 20cc syringe to pull fluids out and transfer them in,” Rahim said. “We pulled fluid out every two hours.”
Basically the doctors actions mirrored what a dialysis machine would be able to do.
It was a scary few hours for the doctors as the child held onto a thin thread of life.
Then came a moment of triumph, according to Fahim.
“I picked her up in my arms for the first time and her diaper was wet,” the Pocatello doctor said. “That wet diaper was a big moment.”
Dr. Fahim knew the girl’s kidneys were functioning again.
This month Fahim returned to the same village in Nepal and had a chance to meet Norbu and her mother again.
“She’s doing really good,” Fahim said. “It was pretty cool to see her.”
The Pocatello doctor admits that his training helped, but he thinks there was something much greater involved in saving the infant girl.
“There are times when something else is involved,” Fahim said. “There is a greater power that can make good things happen.”
This article was originally published in the Idaho State Journal. It is used here with permission.