She was born pre-maturely. So premature that at the time of her birth, the doctors could not even determine the gender of the baby.
She also had a small mass on her lower back which grew with her as she progressed.
Worst of all, she did not have a hole on her anus, so her body had no way to discharge the waste.
She was a fighter. From the moment she was born, the doctors gave up on her. A pediatric surgeon, however, had the wits to check on her condition. The doctor pulled on her little arms, testing her will to survive. The little baby held her fingers securely as if telling the doctor: "I want to live".
Right there and then, the surgeon decided to operate on her to help her with the most pressing concern, that of providing her little body with a means to discharge body waste.
That was when we first heard about her situation. The management of our company sent out an email blast informing us of our friend's and her baby's conditions (both her parents work in the same company as I do).
That was more than four months ago.
Last week she had another operation. It wasn't a planned operation but her doctors said it was necessary.
She got out of the operation fine. She was stable. She was still fighting on.
A few days after the operation, sepsis began to take over her frail body.
The details of the treatment and her death are not clear to me. I wasn't listening anymore as her mother retold the story of how they fought to keep her alive when her doctors were already quitting on her one by one.
I was already immersed in my own thoughts. In my own fragile mortality. In my own possible end.
But the little girl lying in that little box showed me how it was to fight. To hold on to life to the very end.
Even as my physical body decays and the virus traps me into a life resembling the living dead, I will look up to that little angel who, despite her physical deformities and the hardships she had to endure at a very young age, fought with all her might to live.
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