Oh yeah... the winner of the doll contest

Several people saw the title of my post from two days ago and thought I was finally going to announce the winner in the Feral Cheryl Mohamed doll contest.  Whoops.

The truth is there were many very qualified candidates and all of you brought excellent credentials to the table.  But in the end, one contestant had a small, though arguably unfair, edge over the competition;  He helped save the life of a close friend/neighbor.

The Feral Cheryl Mohamed doll was awarded at a formal ceremony this past week to the Sandman (also known as Quietus Leo), a blogging anesthesiologist here in Israel.  Sandman was on duty the day they brought in a young IDF officer named Elroi with a critical shrapnel wound to his head/neck. 

Long time readers will have read my frequent updates on his condition spanning the desperate early days when Elroi was not expected to live, much less wake up... to the small glimmer of hope when he was awake and starting to surprise the doctors with his determination to regain control of his paralyzed left side... to his reteaching himself to walk and rejoin the world as a normal, walking and talking everyday hero.

Sandman happened to stumble across my site and recognized my description of Elroi as a patient he had worked on.  He contacted me and told me that he was delighted to hear of Elroi's progress... especially as he rarely got to hear follow up information on the cases that came through the operating rooms where he worked.

Emails were exchanged... cups of coffee were promised... and lots of time passed.  Yet Sandman and I never managed to get together.  But when he threw his name in the hat for the doll contest I knew in my heart that he was going to be the winner.  As I said above... not fair, but here it is.

So, as Sandman blogs anonymously, I've asked Zahava to do a 'witness protection program' job on his face in this picture from the award ceremony. 

Ok, it wasn't exactly a formal ceremony... it was just my finally getting around to saying thank you by buying a hard-working doc a well-deserved cup of coffee.

Oh yeah, and if you aren't reading him... you should be.