One night Sheeba Ameer was woken from a fitful sleep in a ward of the Pain and Palliative Care Centre, Thrissur, by a rasping noise. The force behind Solace, a children’s NGO, Sheeba noticed Navneet on the next bed gasping for breath. She called for a nurse, who brought a nebuliser that helped the boy breathe. The 16-year-old cancer patient was being looked after by Sheeba. Started on November 8, 2007, Solace takes care of children suffering from life-threatening diseases such as nephrotic syndrome, cancer, thalassaemia and sickle cell anaemia. Recently, Sheeba was conferred with the Abhijith Foundation Award for Best Social Worker in Kerala at a function held in Thiruvananthapuram.
Sheeba, now in her fifties, was inspired to become a social worker at the sight of her daughter’s pain from the cancer that would take her life. It made the homemaker turn into a warrior whose grief became compassion for children in similar agony.The news that her 12-year-old daughter, Niloufa, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia turned her world upside down in 1997.
“When I took her to the Tata Memorial Centre in Mumbai for a bone marrow transplant, I was stunned to see the entire 11th floor was full of children suffering from cancer. I saw kids with amputated legs, some whose eyes were affected by cancer, and many other children in terminal stages. None of the parents knew whether their children would live to see the next day,” she says.
The anguish of the helpless parents echoed her own. Sheeba resolved that she would start an organisation to help cancer victims. Sheeba recalls Niloufa nearing her end, but clung to hope to the end. ‘Umma, you will save me, won’t you?’ she would ask her mother. Niloufa died on August 27, 2013, after a 16-year-battle with the ailment.
From small beginnings, Solace has become a large front of help providing a kit of food ration and clothes to the families of over 1,800 ailing children every month. The organisation also pays for the costly medicines needed for the treatment. Today, Solace has centres in Kochi, Kozhikode, Malappuram, Thrissur, and Palakkad. “We depend a lot on the goodwill of volunteers, of whom many are retired people,” she says.
Navneet was a source of worry. “His condition is going to deteriorate further, just like the way it did with my daughter,” Sheeba laments. The doctor had told her that his cancer has metastasised. The prognosis is grim and he has just a few months to live. Sheeba is grateful that through Solace, she is able to give hands-on help to Navneet.
“Navneet was just a child when he lost his mother. Though I am doing my bit I cannot help but feel sad,” she says; a mother whose maternal grief transforms into compassion every time.Sheeba says when a child gets a life-threatening disease, many parents get angry with God. She comforts them saying God believes they have large hearts, endless patience and the dedication needed to look after their ailing children. “Many of them accept this,” she says.
Sheeba is stoic over the loss of her daughter Niloufa. She admits, “I don’t think I’ve been healed. But I’ve accepted what happened to her as the will of God. I’ve realised that death is the only truth. I love Rumi who wrote, ‘You must learn to carry your sorrows the way you carry your happiness’.”Sheeba carries the sorrows of others to spread comfort to the doomed and the grieving.
Helping hand
❖ Solace has centres at Kochi, Kozhikode, Malappuram, Thrissur, and Palakkad
❖ It provides a kit of food rations to the families of over 1,800 kids every month, pays for costly drugs, and provides clothes.