All right, what do we have here? I wondered as I opened the back doors of the Red Crescent (Iraqi) ambulance. It was a nine-year-old Iraqi boy who had been wounded almost nine days earlier by unwittingly picking up an anti-personnel device. Iraqi surgeons did the best they could for Saleh, but told his father to prepare for his death. The boy’s father bribed a friend who was a Red Crescent ambulance driver to drive his son to our base for another chance.
Once inside the hospital, we were horrified to see that his abdominal wall had been completely blown away, exposing the intestinal tract. His right arm which he had lost in the initial blast had not been treated in nine days; it had been bandaged once and it was covered in blood and pus from his draining wounds. The portion of his remaining left hand was mangled almost beyond recognition.
The Air Force medics and I operated on him nine hours that first day. God show me the way, was whispering in my head over and over. By the grace of God, he began to stabilize.
As a military medical corps, we were not designed to care for pediatric patients, but we arranged for some materials from our army brethren in Baghdad. Every day I emailed a pediatric surgeon friend for advice, and she arranged for a company in Britain to overnight express us all the equipment necessary to do what’s called a wound vac.
This boy, Saleh, had just one hand left that was salvageable.
“If we take this other hand what kind of a life would he have left?” the orthopedic surgeon mused.
“Tell you what, Eric,” I replied. “If I can figure out a way to keep his belly together, you figure out some way to keep that left hand on him.” So that was a pledge. Eric had never reconstructed a hand, but he got on the Internet and started working and pinning and cleaning. Every time we were back there cleaning Saleh’s belly, he was back there doing something he’d never been trained to do, but somehow this all worked out. We prayed a lot. One nice thing about a deployed base the chapel is always open and the lights are on.
Lord, give me the courage to overcome obstacles to achieve the things you want me to.
“If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” (Matthew 21:22)