Right now 80-90% of our patients in the hospital are Afghans. Most of them are trauma patients. They can be members of the Afghan National Army (ANA), Afghan National Police (ANP), or just civilian local nationals (LN). Some of the patients are sent to us for humanitarian reasons. Our ENT surgeon does cleft lip/palate repairs and has done 3 or 4 of them since I have been here. Most of the patients are sent here because they would not survive their injuries if they were treated at Afghan hospitals. Their injuries are complicated. Their stays at our hospital are long because we do not have anywhere to send them that give them what they need. We can't just send them to Germany then Walter Reed like we do with our Americans.
One of my Afghan patients injured his small intestines in a car crash and needed 85 cm of small intestine to be removed surgically. Wow. He's doing fine overall two and a half weeks later. Another Afghan was hit by an IED, lost one eye, has a broken jaw, and had an injury to his carotid artery (the big artery in your neck) which has been repaired. The other patient I have been seeing every day for the last 10 days has 2 broken legs, 2 broken heels, and unfortunately had stroke of some sort in the hospital leaving him in a vegetative state. All 3 of these patients are located within just a few feet of one another in our ward. We do not have private hospital rooms. It's a big open ward like what they had on the TV show "MASH".
So, I have been struggling a bit to make sense of all this. What am I doing here in Afghanistan caring for the locals who have been blown up, were on death's door, and now face long recoveries if they will recover at all? Well, the best I can come up with is that our Afghan patients deserve our best just like anyone else. I do not control who comes to our hospital. We are all here to treat patients. The war rages on. The injured come here and we do what we can to make them better. Most of our patients will never be the same. My job is to look at them as a whole person and treat them with dignity. Our surgeons will fix what they can. Once their work is done, I need to be there to direct the care of these patients. I need to lead our nurses and our technicians to provide excellent care. That's my job as a family doctor - see the whole picture, be an advocate for the patient, and be a leader.
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Matt,
ReplyDeleteWhat a striking difference to the job that you were doing here in Charleston. You know, the sore throats and stubbed toes. We are definitately spoiled (or fortunate, however you look at it) by our docter's care here in the U.S. Perhaps you could explain what your job was like here for those who don't know? I love you, Matt. Whether your fixing stubbed toes or broken legs. Hey, do you guys have dogs where you are? They are very theraputic to patients you know.
Annie
Annie,
ReplyDeleteThere are dogs here as a matter of fact. I just heard about it the other day. We have a lot of military dogs. Several days a week the sick ones will come to the hospital if they need x rays. I'll keep my eyes peeled for them. Yeah, maybe we can take them over to the ward.