Ahror Rahmedov is very successful by any conventional measure although
he, himself, wouldn't have predicted the course of his life when he
was growing up in Uzbekistan.
First, his recent achievements:
Ahror recently graduated from the University of Washington with a BS
in Computer Sciences and Engineering. He had supported himself throughout
this program by working as a technical support specialist in our Speech
& Hearing Sciences department. He is now pursuing a graduate degree
in biomedical engineering at the University of California in Los Angeles
(UCLA). And as if he were not busy enough, he has just published his
autobiography: "Finding
Face and Faith in America." But these achievements were
not among his expectations ten years ago when, as a medical student
in Uzbekistan, he suffered devastating facial injuries in a firearms
accident.
Ahror was born and raised in Toshkent, Uzbekistan. When his mother
died of cancer in his last year of high school, he decided to become
a doctor. His medical education at Toshkent State Medical Institute
became more complicated when his father was unjustly imprisoned and
Ahror had to support his six younger sisters. But his greatest challenge
was the injury he sustained when hit in the face by a rocket at a friend's
wedding. The explosive was meant to announce the appearance of the bride
and the groom, but instead it tore through Ahror's face.
In his new autobiography, Ahror describes how he spent two years in
local Uzbek hospitals before two Americans helped him come to the United
States for specialized medical care. Through the generosity of strangers,
many of them members of the Seattle Toshkent Sister City Association,
Ahror was able to have multiple reconstructive surgeries and start a
new life here.
Communication is still challenging. Ahror has a variety of strategies
that he uses in different ways depending on the communication partner
and the context. For one-to-one communication, he typically uses his
own speech, supplementing it with hand-writing if necessary for less
familiar partners. When speaking to classmates as a student at UW, he
crafted slide presentations with voice output, with software he devised.
From his many friends and colleagues, Ahror recently received funds
for a PDA-style palmtop with Gus,
Inc. software. He has begun integrating this portable system into
his communication strategies, including text-messaging via the Internet
in place of a telephone and experimenting with external speakers for
presentations.
Ahror writes all about his early life as well as his more recent challenges
in his fascinating autobiography "Finding Face and Faith in America."
Follow the link in the upper left of this page to learn more about this
book and how to get it. Follow the link below to visit his web site
where he tells more of his story and shows photos from all parts of
his life.
