Kurds

This morning was a nice slow morning. I slept in a bit and read some of my book. (TJ had meetings to go to this morning, so I didn't go with her.) This afternoon TJ and I met with a Kurdish family. They have a daughter who might have Angelman Syndrome (AS) that is participating in TJ's research. We needed to ask them some questions about the girl, Rojbin (with the 'i' sounding like 'ee') They're a family of six; the uncle (who I didn't meet), the mother, a boy in 11th grade, a daughter in 9th grade, Rojbin (I don't know what grade she's in, but she's 9.), and a daughter who is probably in kindergarten. The mother's basic English is good, but she still needs a translator. The uncle usually translates, but he couldn't be there today, so the older daughter was going to translate. But she ended up mostly watching the two youngest and the boy translated. Both of them speak English well. They moved here six years ago from Turkey. Rojbin had a heart attack when she was 20 days old. Luckily she was in the hospital when it happened. But the doctors aren't very good and the hospitals are very prejudiced. The Turks won't let the Kurdish into the hospital unless they speak Turkish and if they don't have money they make them sleep outside. (And here 'have money' means in addition to the medical fees, e.g. a bribe.) They didn't do anything about Rojbin's heart for a year. They said she was too small to do the surgery immediately. They were hoping that Rojbin would grow and the heart would fix itself. She's been on a feeding tube for several years because she might have reflux. (They're not sure because every doctor they talked to - and they went to many - told them something different.) Now they're trying to get her to start eating food again, but because she wasn't allowed to for so long, she refuses to eat it now. But all in all she is doing very well. She can walk, she can say a lot of words (she loves to say 'okay'), and she has a lot of hand signs. She loves to give kisses. When I first came in she took my hand and kissed it and then gave me her hand so I could kiss it (she did that more than once). And she really loves to blow kisses. It was very cute. Before we left, Rojbin's mum gave TJ and I each a lovely Kurdish scarf. (I'll try to put a picture up later.) Mine is blue and TJ's is green.