SABAH (90)
Memoirs of Sabah VatankhahInterviewed and Compiled by Fatemeh Doustkami
Translated by Natalie Haghverdian
2021-12-27
SABAH (90)
Memoirs of Sabah Vatankhah
Interviewed and Compiled by Fatemeh Doustkami
Translated by Natalie Haghverdian
Published by Soore Mehr Publishing Co.
Persian Version 2019
There were cases which the doctor had to amputate and they had no other option. One time, Dr. Akashe decided to amputate the foot of an injured. He had tried his best to preserve it but there was really no possibility.
On that day I was looking at the surgery from rear of the glass window of the resting area of personnel. For amputation[1], there was a saw made of steel with big and arc shaped ribs. Dr. Akashe took the saw in his hands and placed it upper the knee of the patient and resected the bones in the thigh. I didn’t make a move and stared at his hand. I was stoned behind the window.
Immediately after the amputation, they would burn the main vessels which were bleeding through a device called “Cautery” which resembled soldering iron and was sharp to stop the bleeding. When the Cautery touched the vessel, tiny smog amounted. Although I was behind the wall and couldn’t hear the sound in the surgery room and smell anything, but my nose was filled with barbequed meat. I was feeling bad. Life was going out of my hands and feet. I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to my friends quietly and leaning on the wall.
But the new doctor, in a hall reaching the surgery room, easily cut the skin and flesh of a hanging finger of a patient with a blade and handed the finger to me. How I missed Dr. Aksahe and his colleagues. The new doctor was one of those doctors who had come there to spend his mandatory plan in frontline. I was confused with what to do with that finger. I went to one of the male soldiers of Abadan army who was in the hospital. I explained him the situation and handed over the finger. He said: “Sister, what shall I do with this?” I said: “Nothing, just do the ablution it and bury it.” He said: “Where? How?”, I said: “I don’t know. Wherever possible; take it to one of the palm groves and bury it.”
Poor guy was shocked. He had no option. He knew that he had to do something. He took the finger and left.
I had seen doctors like him and even worse than him; once, an anesthesiologist had come to the hospital. He had brought a young man who was a few years younger than him as colleague. Sometimes during lunch time I saw that the anesthesiologist has placed his hand under his chin and is staring with his protruding eyes at the young boy who was his colleague and had green eyes. His look had fire flames in it. It didn’t take long until all noticed the ethical problem of the physician with the little boy.
In the mornings, around ten o’clock, he came out of his room with sleepy eyes and yawning. He took his towel and went to take a bath. Then he came out and would order to bring his breakfast. It was around noon time when he started his work. His carelessness and lack of discipline in that condition was somehow an offense to us and the patients. It was as if he wanted to mock us. He thought of war as a joke and funny thing.
Our Hejab and behavior of our team members in aid department in hospital didn’t let others to reach out to us and look at us disrespectfully. Even if the individual was not in that atmosphere and these things were not important for him. But this anesthesiologist was very rude and impudent. If he had the chance, without taking account our appearance and behavior, he would start smiling and invited us to have tea and lunch with him. We frowned at him and didn’t welcome his offer but he didn’t care! He wouldn’t get offended or withdraw his offer!
He was not normal and his behavior was suspicious. Once he was feeling so bad and was stumbling and could not stand on his feet. Then he wanted to check his pulse. He had placed his hand on his own pulse and was telling Farokhondeh Esmaeili: “How many does my pulse beat?!” Farokhondeh had told him: “You are getting your own pulse, how come you ask me?!”
Farokhondeh and I decided to find out what is going on. Presence of such a person in the hospital as an anesthesiologist was a risk. We went to the window of his resting room which leaded to the backyard of the hospital. We saw that a big number of vials or containers of Pete dine ampoule were on the ground. We found out what is going on. He was an addict and due to hangover was referring to the painkillers of the surgery ward. In such a situation! In a situation that we were in dire need of painkillers once in a while. We found out that the day that he was asking Farokhondeh about his pulse, he had injected large volume and was afraid to overdose. Therefore he checked his pulse every minute.
I discussed this issue with Mr. Hassani who was the Manager of hospital. He promised to follow-up. Then we informed Basij of the hospital about this and showed them the empty containers. They took the containers and said that they will investigate.
A few days later, a wounded patient was brought to the surgery room. A quiver had hit his jaw and nothing was left of it. The quiver had dislocated the jaw, his tongue was hanging out and the mouth of the patient had the shape of an unformed hole. Since his injury was not in a sensitive area, he survived.
The wounded patient was sent to surgery ward. The operation took about seven, eight hours. They grafted his jaw. In this kind of operation, they usually took a piece of the bone in thigh and grafted it instead of the bone in the jaw. Grafting was a heavy operation and it didn’t take less than five, six hours and sometimes even eleven, twelve hours. Thanks God the operation was good and the surgeon was satisfied of the results. We took him to recovery.
We were in recovery when the addict anesthesiologist came to visit the patient. In all operations, in order to control the breathing situation of the patient, a pipe called “R-V” or air tube which was a channel for breathing, was placed in the larynx of the patient. R-V helped the wounded to breathe better and also showed the breathing condition to the physician.
Usually R-V was kept in the mouth of the patient until full alertness and when the patient was being moved from recovery to ward, it was separated. If the jaw or the mouth of the patient was the problem and was being operated, this R-V had to stay longer to control the respiratory condition of the patient. These were experiences that we had acquired by working in surgery and recovery wards.
The physician looked at the patient whose whole face was bandaged and then turned to one of the nurses of the recovery room and said: “Take his R-V out!”
Besides the nurse and me, there was another person in the recovery room whom I don’t remember now. We three looked at each other surprised. The nurse said: “What did you say doctor?! Take his R-V out?!” The doctor said: “Yes, you heard it right!”
The nurse looked at the doctor confused. I said: “But doctor, this patient hasn’t gained consciousness yet. Why are we in a hurry to remove his R-V?!” He said: “Do as I said. I know better or you?!”
The aid worker who was with me in the room said: “This might endanger his life …”
The complexed doctor didn’t wait. He took the R-V out of the mouth and larynx of the patient. A few seconds after moving the R-V the wounded patient went into seizure and his hands and feet started shaking. My heart was falling out of my chest. We ran towards him. The young man was losing his life right in front of our eyes. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to place the RV back. This had its own method and was not something to be done by me or the nurse in the recovery.
We were looking for a solution but the young man became martyr. I couldn’t believe that an individual could kill a person so easily in front of the eyes of the others in bare sunlight. The anesthesiologist had passed the borders of hostility; his wrong doings in the hospital and now this. The life of the patient had no value for him. He was not in a normal condition. He didn’t care about the treason he had done.
I decided to settle his issue right at that moment. I went to Basij office. I explained what had happened. I said that if the previous time that I had report about his wrongdoing to you, you had taken action, and today this wounded patient wouldn’t die. They said that they had not been indifferent and this issue is under investigation.
By the time they wanted to take any action, his mandatory plan was finished, and he went away.
One night little while after Eftar, a pick-up came inside the yard of the hospital horning. I went to emergency ward to my friends. When we heard the horn sound, we all jumped to the yard. The pick-up rear part was full of wounded and corpses in soil and blood. The driver said crying they have bombarded the Pirouz mosque of Abadan!
Prior to the call for prayers the Iraqi artillery had started shooting. We could hear the explosion each instance. Therefore we were on full alert and our equipment was ready. We all transferred the injured and martyrs out of the pick-up quickly. Among the martyrs, I saw Mr. Atash Panjeh, the Governor of Abadan. I sighed.
He had become martyr in a painful way. All bones from neck to waist had been broken and smashed. It had been a while that I had become familiar with Mr. Atash Panjeh and his wife. We had gone to their home a few times in Mahshahr. His wife was a kind and smiling woman and acted warmly towards us.
Mr. Atash Panjeh was one of the religious and active forces of Abadan and his title as Governor had just been granted on that day. Poor guy was martyred on the same day. As the driver said they were eating Eftar when the mosque had been bombarded.
There were almost thirty martyrs and wounded or even more, in the back of pick-up. A few minutes after the arrival of the first pick-up the second one arrived too. It was a chaos in the yard of the hospital. The crying and whining sounds of people who were looking for their loved ones, was lost in the humming and running and coordinating actions of personnel of the emergency ward and aid workers.
We had become skillful. There was no sign of confusion and stunning that we underwent in the first days. We ran around quickly and arranged tasks. I saw a few members of Jihad among the martyrs. We cut the clothes of the injured and washed their wounds and bandaged. Before all these we first found their veins and checked their blood pressure. Emergency ward was packed. Many had come from other wards to help.
To be continued …
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