It was 3:45 p.m. Chicago time Tuesday, but for 3 1/2-year-old Rula Abdelrazek, it was well past her usual bedtime as she nodded off during a news conference about her upcoming surgery at Highland Park Hospital.
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Wearing white sandals and a white sundress with red flowers, the Palestinian girl, who sat on her uncle’s lap, seemed oblivious to all the excitement over her first visit to the hospital Tuesday.
She and her uncle, Abdellah Abdelrazek, arrived Saturday at O’Hare International Airport from Tel Aviv to begin preparations for surgery on a rare, congenital deformity that has affected her face. The procedure at the hospital is scheduled for Monday.
While the girl was found to be otherwise healthy after an examination this week by the hospital’s chief pediatrician, Rula was still feeling the effects of jet lag and the Midwest’s high humidity, said her Barrington host, Dean Dabbah.
Plus, she’s a little anxious about being thousands of miles away from her parents in the West Bank, where it is eight hours ahead of Chicago, and visiting a strange place where few speak her native Arabic.
“She has been sitting on her uncle’s lap the whole time,” said Dabbah, a Palestinian-American who speaks Arabic. “When I try to hold her, she cries.”
On Sunday, after a visit to Santa’s Village in East Dundee, Rula will enter the hospital for Monday morning’s operation.
The procedure will culminate months of work by the 2-year-old Chicago chapter of Operation Smile, a children’s medical charity. Founded in Norfolk, Va., in 1982, it volunteers medical services for reconstructive surgery for indigent children and young adults here and abroad. More than 43,000 youngsters have benefited from its work.
For Rula’s procedure, the local chapter and some Highland Park residents raised funds for her air travel, and the hospital donated a room, operating facilities and nursing services. Also, five specialists on staff at Highland Park volunteered their time and skills.
The medical care and surgery expenses would have totaled about $80,000 if they were not being donated, said Steve Bloch, one of the plastic surgeons who will operate on Rula.
Rula was born with a plagiocephally deformity, a premature fusion of the parts of the skull that prevents the brain from growing normally.
The growing brain, which triples in volume in the first year of life, then distorts the face. Other than the social stigma, the deformity does not usually cause other complications, such as mental retardation, Bloch said.
The five- to six-hour procedure will involve an incision from ear to ear and across the top of Rula’s head. Then her forehead will be peeled down so the surgeons can reshape her skull.