We Wait

Baghdad ballet dancer waits for class to begin

Update from the previous post:

Our Iraqi staff member was diagnosed with having an acute myocardial infarction, aka a "heart attack". The degree of blockage within his coronary arteries and subsequent damage to his heart could not be ascertained by the Army surgical hospital as it was not set up with a catheterization lab nor equipped to do an angiogram. The cardiologist therefor recommended transferring the patient to an appropriate Iraqi facility where he could get further definitive treatment.

Now is where the fun begins. There are three such hospitals in Baghdad that are equipped to do the needed procedures. The preferred one had no available space, and told our recent heart attack victim to try back in a few days. The second, accepted our guy, ran an ECG, blood pressure, drew blood for labs, and then sent him home. The physician stated that "cardiology really wasn't his thing, and that the real expert was enjoying his weekend and would be into the hospital in a few days". He prescribed some blood pressure medicine and sent our guy away.

The third and final choice was also equipped to do the procedure but our staff member didn't feel safe going there. The hospitals here are wildly secular, and roving armed gangs have been known to go through the rooms looking patients that weren't of the appropriate religious flavor.

Where does that leave us? Twenty-four hours after having an MI our 53-year old staff member with chronic high blood pressure and a significant cardiac history is back at the villa resting in his room. No one has any idea as to the damage to his heart nor the degree of blockage to his coronary arteries. If this were the United States he would be admitted to the ICU and on his way for an angiogram. Maybe a hospital bed will become free tomorrow. We wait.

My Head Hurts

I treat a lot of headaches. That seems to be the chief complaint of our local Iraqi staff, but they describe it in such debilitating terms that it often makes me suspicious. A a single aspirin or Tylenol later and they're good as new, generally within ten minutes, which is surprising as the absorption rate is closer to fifteen minutes.

Today was a sprained knee, so bad that the staff member said, wincing and moaning, that he couldn't walk. I told him to ice it; a half an hour later he's running around with no signs of injury. It's a miracle!!

The truth is that I found many Iraqis to be attention seeking. All they want is someone to listen to their near-death complaint, give them something that looks like medicine and they're merrily on their way. I'm not sure what the cultural reason is for this. If it were my 4-year old I'd say that he's trying to get out of school. At least it worked for me a time or two when I was younger. I don't believe the staff is trying to dodge work, because they're happily back at it again once they've been pulled back from the bright light and resuscitated. I think that I'm going to teach my Iraqi security operators how to initiate IV therapy. Ya got a headache? Ya need an IV!! At least my guys can get some good training out of it.

A Horse Of A Different Color

Discarded clay plant pots tossed up against a wall

I've given thousands of inoculations in my lifetime, so when one of the guards strolled into the office last night looking for someone to give him a Vitamin B shot I thought it no big deal. Then one of the young producers wandered past the the door prompting me to ask, "Hey, you wanna give this guy his shot?" It's not something that the media guys get to do every day, so I thought it would be a good learning experience.

I asked him if he'd ever done it before and he told me that he does his horses all the time. OK, sounds good, but I quickly found out that the process for horses and people is different. I didn't know that when you give a shot to a horse you detach the needle from the syringe, stick the horse with just the needle, and then reattach the syringe to push the meds.

So there's my bewildered guard with a bare needle sticking out of his ass and my producer trying desperately to reattach the stubborn syringe as the med is leaking down this guy's leg. I was right, it was a learning experience after all.

Iraqi Hospital

Filming in the neo-natal room of the hospital. The equipment was ancient and you felt desperate watching the little guy struggling inside.

Today we visited an Iraqi Red Crescent hospital in the city. The Director was kind enough to show us around and let us shoot. We spent about 40 minutes in the maternity wing going from room to room talking with the visibly nervous new mothers.

Things I learned:

- Fathers wait outside the delivery rooms and sisters or mothers accompany the expecting mother.
- No epidurals here. They don't have the equipment for them.
- Even while lying in a hospital bed all of the women are dressed in the traditional head scarves.
- There are more guns in the hospital than you would like to think.
- The hospital is desperate for equipment.
- The incubator for the neo-natals had to be 50 years old.

I leave tomorrow. Next stop, Dubai.

Trust me, I'm a doctor

Baghdad street dogs relaxing in the morning sun

Iraqi medicine really winds me up. I had one of the contract guards come to me with what I easily determined was a mild sinus infection. He had previously visited one of the local "physicians" who had given him some tablets and offered to give him an injection as well. I looked at the tablets and discovered that they were diuretics designed to make him urinate, reportedly lowering his overall fluid level and making the pressure in his head go away. I told him that was probably the stupidest thing that I ever heard and advised him to throw the tablets away. Buddha only knows what the injection was supposed to be for. I did find out that they have to pay cash for pills and injections, which now starts to make sense.

If you're ever sick in Iraq, or any other similar country, be very wary of someone that is calling him/herself a "doctor". For me, I'll go to the ends of the earth to seek out a current or ex-Army Special Forces medic in whatever county I happen to be in. They're always superbly equipped and their medical skills are the best in the world.

Crossroads

Dust from the Iraqi dessert, it’s like a khaki fog.

Aside from security, I’m also tasked with being the team’s medic. I spend most of my time treating a variety of aliments, commonly GI distress, eye infections, respiratory issues, and the occasional urinary tract infection. As part of these duties I maintain the medical locker, the trauma kits, and I also teach and train our Iraqi counterparts in trauma management.

I’ve always enjoyed medicine; found it fascinating and realized that I had a very strong aptitude for it. I think that if I ever had one regret in life it would be not going to medical school when I was younger. I considered it when I was a 23 year-old lieutenant in the Army, but chose to go into Special Forces instead. That choice was probably one of the great crossroads in my life, and the direction that I headed off in led me on a wonderful, thrilling adventure, but I will always be haunted by, “what if?”