Word: er
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...demobilization of Saddam Hussein's army has left the country with a surplus of military surgeons, who are grateful for a hospital job that pays $350 a month. Their experience in battlefield medicine gives them the ability both to manage expectations and to improvise. "If a patient leaves the ER still breathing and not bleeding, then I would say we have done our job," says Qais Mohammed Ali, a thoracic and vascular surgeon. "We are not in the miracle business...
...Karam barely awake. But although they could not have known it, they were very, very lucky. Theirs was the first (and, it turned out, only) bombing of the day in Baghdad, and they were the only seriously injured victims. This meant they would get the undivided attention of the ER team. "On other days we have had 20, 30, even 50 people here," says Emad, "and in the confusion, patients can die from simple things, like blood loss...
Another stroke of luck: the hospital had just received a fresh supply of blood, which was vital for Salah, who had lost so much that he needed a transfusion. By the time the rest of the TIME Baghdad staff was alerted and arrived at the hospital, the ER workers had done what they do best: stopped the blood loss and patched up the wounds. The ancient X-ray machine revealed that Abu Karam and Salah had many pieces of shrapnel lodged in their bodies, but there were no serious internal wounds...
...more immediate danger was the threat of secondary infections. The ER was the filthiest I have ever encountered. The floor was littered with medical debris--old bloodstained bandages, syringes, broken vials. The garbage bins had no plastic liners and were spattered with coagulated blood, gobs of spit and other fluids. Sweepers came through every hour with dirty mops and pails of brown disinfectant, but their halfhearted labor was quickly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of patients and visitors. Nobody paid any attention to the NO SMOKING sign, not even the doctors and nurses. Broken windows allowed dust to enter...
...early afternoon, the ER doctors had released our colleagues. Now our options were either to admit them into the surgical ward of the main hospital, where it would be five days before a surgeon would get around to stitching their wounds, or to move them to a private hospital for immediate stitching. Most Iraqis can't afford private hospitals, even though the rooms cost only $10 a day and specialists charge just $200 for serious surgery...