Day 310: 1000 Patients

Back at my clinic in Fallon it would take all of our providers about a month to collectively see a thousand patients. Well, today a group of doctors, nurses, and medics from the US, Afghanistan, Italy and Slovenia accomplished in just a few hours what would take weeks of effort back home--we saw and treated 1000 patients.

Today kicked off a new era in our mentoring mission here in western Afghanistan as we performed our first ever US led medical humanitarian assistance mission in the region. Our goal was simple...go to a remote village in outer Herat and see as many patients as we possibly could in a single afternoon. After driving down bumpy, dusty, dirt roads for nearly 2 hours we arrived at our venue. It was a school on the outskirts of a large village where hundreds of people had gathered in anticipation of our arrival.

After setting up some security, we got busy doing what we were there to do--see patients. On one side of the school we gathered the women and on the other side we lined up the men. Children were mostly with the women, but some made it over to the male side where I had set up shop. One by one the patients came up to be seen (okay, who are we kidding, it wasn’t that orderly...imagine Walmart on the day after Thanksgiving). At times it was pretty crazy. We had only about 8 or 9 medical providers and even fewer interpreters. The Afghan army with the aid of some of the coalition guarded the perimeter and helped with crowd control.

As I saw patients, I was struck by how lucky we are to have good medical care back home. Most of these people had common complaints...headaches, arthritis, stomach ache, and sore throats. For these people it was pretty easy to give them a few medicines and send them on their way knowing that what we had given them would be very helpful for them. Other patients were more complicated. We saw patients with epilepsy, developmental problems, birth defects, amputations, suspected heart disease, etc. Unfortunately, there was little we could do with these patients. We referred them to their public health hospital (knowing that they probably couldn’t do much for them either), gave them some vitamins or tylenol and sent them back home. It was frustrating to know that many of the patient’s conditions would be easily treated back home, but here nothing could be done for them. I saw several people, including both children and adults, who probably will not live long due to their conditions. Again, it was frustrating to feel so helpless, but the reality is that there is really nothing you can do given the lack of resources in the country.

My favorite patient of the day was a five year old boy with skeletal dysplasia (I’m not sure of the politically correct non-medical term these days, but essentially he was a midget). This kid was tiny. My little Eden back home was twice as big as this little guy...which says a lot if you know Eden. He was very cute. You would never guess that this kid could talk. But he could understand and respond even to my broken Dari. The cutest thing about this kid was that every 20-30 seconds he would smile, stick out his hand to shake mine, and then in his little “munchkin” voice say “hi”. Hard to really convey the experience in words, but honestly it was a heart warming encounter.

After 4 or 5 hours we had finished seeing all of the patients we had come to treat. So we jumped back in our vehicles and headed back home to Camp Stone. It was a good day. Hopefully some of the people we saw benefited from the care we provided. Hopefully it helped convince the people in the village that the Americans, Slovenians, and Italians were there to help them and their country. Hopefully it helped make the Afghan army a little stronger and a little more legitimate in the eyes of the Afghan people.

1000 patients...wow, I don’t think I can ever complain about a “full schedule” back home again.