Of course, we care. It is compassion that brings us aid workers to the scene of the drama. Isn't it?

We come from afar, we work hard, we take risks and we speak kind words. And then we go home.

"What an interesting experience!" greets us back with our families and friends. We tell a few stories of foreign places and then our own lives get busy again.

Just before coming here to Chechnya I was building a house. My own house. But with every nail that I drove into the timber, my thoughts were in familiar Grozny. There, the BBC reports recounted, houses that had been constructed with equal hope for the future were being taken apart by Russian bombs. How, I asked myself, would I feel if this house of mine was suddenly destroyed?

There isn't a family in Chechnya that hasn't been touched by the war. Not only have family homes and livelihoods been devastated, but parents, children, relatives and friends were hurt or killed. And this is not easily brushed aside.

I thought I could empathise. Of course, I could understand. Of course, I could relate to such experiences. Of course, I had compassion.

And the reality of the devastation deserving compassion is unequivocal. Every day Movsar and Roman set off with their teams to visit different towns and villages of Chechnya. It's a long trip and needs an early start.

They cross endless checkpoints and at each of these a fresh effort is made to sweet talk their way past often obnoxious soldiers that resentfully deal with the traffic of Chechens returning to check on their homes.

They've got the hang of letting one person jump out immediately, with all permits and documents in hand, offer a few pleasant words and talk about the weather. The routine works most of the time, only occasionally bored soldiers, or the ever attendant FSB agents, cause frustration.

A drive of an hour or two into Chechnya over bad roads and often slowed down by military convoys - For God's sake, don't pull over and stop, or you'll be mistaken for an ambush - they'll arrive at the destination for the day. Where the clinics or hospitals are not destroyed, which is the case in perhaps every fourth destination, they find medical staff improvising to provide local residents with "essential health care." Except without supplies this is somewhat difficult.

Roman, a children's doctor in his previous life, came back very touched the other day. He's been doing this for several weeks now and certainly the help is very much appreciated wherever he goes, so to hear him talk of this particular visit to a rural clinic, and the reaction of the health workers there, made me think that it must have been very emotional.

The other doctor, Movsar was at a neighbouring village the day before. While he was interviewing the resident doctor to get the information we need to understand the needs and provide the help required, villagers rushed in with two injured men. The men had been chasing an escaped cow not far from the village and stumbled over a trip wire that triggered a grenade. Fortunately our doctors carry an emergency surgical kit for just such incidents which our surgeon was very thankful for having in the car.

When I asked what the outcome for the victims was, Movsar replied -"Oh, they're fine."

That's a surgeon talking and not referring to the horrible injuries, but simply wanting to say that they did not die.

I sit by her side. She reacts with an expression-less nods of her head. That is all she can move, her head. I beg her for a smile, for a sign of recognition.

Perhaps she is recognising me, as she looks intently at me, eyes skewed in different directions. When I present her with a Tiki amulet from New Zealand, she seems to be fascinated. Her eye does not waver from the bone carving as I tie it to the bed railing. For half an hour she stares at it.

Back a week later there is excitement and new hope again. A specialist doctor had been that morning, I am told by her parents. The doctor was positive that .. Olga would be able to swallow again, and the plastic tube forced down her throat would no longer be necessary. What despair does such a measure of progress reflect? I think to myself.

Olga was a friend. And seeing her in bed like this, takes my thoughts to the time, exactly two years ago today, when I myself lay like this and needed the same care from those close to me.

I can relate to her, I care for her. I toy with the idea of how Movsar, the neurosurgeon working with us in Chechnya, could magically heal Olga. But my idle thoughts cannot avoid the fact that Movsar is needed in Chechnya. It is just that my compassion for this poor girl is so much more meaningful to me, than the compassion I can have for the countless Chechens that are nevertheless experiencing similar sorrow and despair.

Degrees of compassion ..

Just before I leave, I implore Olga to give me a sign of recognition. If you look forward to my next visit, grunt twice - I plead. And she did.