Helina Blogs

  “You must be brave!” These are some of the words I am told regularly followed by an awed look. My addiction to traveling began with my first adventure, where I quickly learned to love the world. It all started when I made travel plans with a group of classmates in graduate school for a month getaway in Italy and Egypt. Everyone flaked out of the plan as we got closer to the travel dates and I was forced to embark on the journey alone. So full disclosure, I became a solo traveler out of necessity, rather than by choice. My desire to travel the world started after reading the book,  Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace .    If you haven’t read the book, it’s by the mountain climber, Greg Mortenson, who shares his incredible transition from life as a nurse to a mountain climber and humanitarian committed to reducing poverty and elevating the education of little girls in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mortenson, who attempted to climb K2, the world’s s...

I’ve learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up to them; I’ve learned that no matter how much you care, some people just don’t care back; I’ve learned that it takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it; I’ve learned that you can get by on charm, for about fifteen minutes. After that, you’d better know something; I’ve learned that either you control your attitude or it controls you; I’ve learned that no matter how hot and steamy a relationship is at first, the passion fades and there had better be something else to take its place; I’ve learned that sometimes the people you expect to kick you when you’re downhill are the ones to help you get back up; I’ve learned that true friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance. Same goes for true love; I’ve learned that just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to doesn’t mean that they don’t love you with all they have; ...

During the month of Ramadan, Muslims practice an act of worship to build empathy for the world’s less fortunate, for whom hunger is not a choice. Muslims get a chance to reflect, deepen spiritually, and strengthen bonds with family and friends. Ramadan is divided into three parts, each of which consists of ten days. The first ten days are referred to as the mercy days; where Muslims seek God’s mercy and share it with others, especially towards family-bondage. The second ten days are forgiveness days, where Muslims seek forgiveness and repentance and make amends for their mistakes. Finally, the very last ten days of Ramadan symbolize emancipation from hell fire and it is here where Muslims spend their last ten nights in solid devotion and exert themselves even more in worship. Ramadan is not about starving one’s self for 16 hours from sunrise to sunset during the exhausting heat of summer nor is it a mechanism to lose weight. Restraining from food or drink during the summer heat becomes...

Fatima, mother of eleven children, had watched as her town in northern Kurdistan was turned from a small river community into a combat zone. With foreign armies marching through her city and one son taken into captivity, her family fled to a refugee camp in the bordering region. Years of economic sanctions and multiple home displacements had already made life difficult. So when Fatima learned of an opportunity to move to the United States, she knew it was a chance for a better life. Departing her homeland was no easy decision, it was a last resort to save her family. For Fatima, family stability was the ultimate goal — to travel across the ocean to America was the only possibility of providing it, along with good health. Once in the U.S., her adult children traveled by bus to factory jobs and took English classes on the weekends. Her younger children thrived in the public-school system. Still, Fatima struggled to support her family because the culture, language and people were so unfam...

Our human brain, the most powerful organ in the universe, is just remarkable! Humans are constantly striving to understand what we don’t already know. As a species, we remain unsatisfied to accept things the way they are, so we strive to be informed and make judgement  from our existing knowledge. If something doesn’t match or mesh with a particular presumption, we intrinsically attempt to bridge the gap between what we know and what we want to know. As healthcare providers, we often assume our clinical judgement based on clinical standards of care; a criteria that we are trained with as healthcare providers. For example, if a patient is prescribed but fails to take mediation, we are trained to assume that the patient is not compliant. Our judgment about a patient starts the moment they walk through our door, as we begin to assess not just their overall health, but how forthcoming or accurate they are about their history. Our mind is readily able to fill in all kinds...

Bekhal was fading fast. The 25-year old woman, trapped in her native Kurdistan in northern Iraq, had unknowingly taken counterfeit medications, given to her by doctors, and as a result the Leukemia in her bones continued to spread. Standing frailly in a doorway of her family home, Bekhal listened as her father told me about the investigation into the phony drugs. Now, only days after being given the medication in a government hospital, doctors informed Bekhal that recovery within Kurdistan was impossible. Facing few options, the father outlined his plan to sell his modest house to travel with Bekhal to India in search of a last chance to save his only daughter. When I returned to my native Kurdistan to administer heath aid to refugees, I encountered countless individuals like Bekhal who were suffering unnecessarily because of a lack of government quality control and drug safety. In Kurdistan, years of war, oppression and sanctions imposed on...

Its dawn, the rays from the sun shine across my bedroom and my eyes open wide, I grab my IPhone and I see that its 6:30am. Time to get up?  I then realize its Friday, my off day from work. I try to get back to sleep but I am too awake.  Instead, I decide to jump out of bed and start my weekend. I put the angelic voice of Fairuz on, open my windows and here I find myself meditating to the beautiful view of Sulaimani, while inhaling the biggest dose of fresh air possible. I look down from my balcony and I see a few old men with their cute traditional Kurdish shalwal and qamis on, with a bag of fresh bread in their hand. Me drooling for some myself, I choose to change quickly and run downstairs to get some from the neighborhood bakery.  I walk by the teahouse, and here I hear the stirring noise of the teaspoons in the chai istikan (little tea cups), the closest noise to my heart and mind.  Here I think to myself, what a beautiful start to a day for me. The view of...