Nine months and countless surgical interventions later, she stood up at the United Nations on her 16th birthday on Friday to deliver a defiant riposte.
Recovery can come only with vital, even heroic, outside help; but such help, no matter how inspiring the generosity it embodies, will do little to restore Haiti unless it addresses, as countless prior interventions built on transports of sympathy have not, the man-made causes that lie beneath the Haitian malady.
However, I am not asked, as an American, to reflect on the yearly anniversary of our atomic bombs falling upon Japan, or our countless military interventions throughout the world.
If the motive is humanitarian then we must be prepared for countless future military interventions on behalf of democracy, self-determination and minority rights.
"Despite affordable and available life-saving interventions, countless mothers, babies and children continue to die each day simply because of where they are born and live," said Alpha Oumar Konaré, Chairperson, Commission of the African Union.
Now that I could "feel", I was feeling everything - including the pain I had tried to swallow for years of medical uncertainty, surgical interventions, and countless disappointments.
For him, the fact that uncurbed population growth and extreme underdevelopment can be reconciled in Lagos through countless individual ad hoc interventions signals the failure of conventional notions of urban planning but also the infinite possibilities of new ones.
He spent over four months in hospital, much of the time on a ventilator, and had countless tests, scans and other interventions.
How about ending the war on drugs, demilitarizing the police, advocating for prison reform, investing in street-level intervention programs, or stopping the drone strikes and the endless military interventions that kill countless civilians and radicalize the survivors.
