How a stranger in Poland helped save our daughter's life after she was diagnosed with a rare illness

At 14:24 on Monday, my daughter Rachel walked up to a brass bell at the Rondebosch Medical Centre. She gripped the rope attached to the bell and swung it. The bell chimed. I swallowed the lump in my throat. 

A few minutes earlier, her doctor, paediatric oncologist and haematologist (and musician and all-round hero) Marc Hendricks, opened a government-brown medical file, bulging with notes, and wrote two little letters: "D/C", the medical abbreviation for "discharge".