There is a certain purity in ignorance. Often when faced with a problem if all we know is the problem then our concentration is focused on the problem and solving the problem. The more extraneous details we are given, the more complicated and confusing a given situation may become. I have thought of this principle a lot as I see the surgeons operating on patients. The patients they operate on come in a variety of types. There is the wounded American member of the armed forces, typically, Army soldier or Marine, innocent civilian, adult or child injured as a bystander or involved in a non combat injury such as a motor vehicle accident, coalition forces, civilian contactors, Iraqi armed forces, or terrorists, which may be Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian, or another nationality trying to further destabilize the region. The OR is set up to have two operations going on in the same room and at times it has had an armed forces on one of the tables and a terrorist on the other. You can imagine how hard this can be for a surgeon and the staff who have been up all night, wondering; they are away from their family, missing anniversaries, birthday’s, graduations etc. to be busting there’s to save a guy who hours before was trying to kill “us”. There are a couple of ideals at work here, first there is the professionalism of doctoring and once the drapes go on the patient, faces aren’t seen and stories aren’t told, just bleeding that needs to be stopped, broken bones needed to be fixated, organs that need repair and so on. The purity of ignorance, is that once the drape is over the patient, the blood of child-adult, soldier-civilian, hero-terrorist, Iraqi-American all looks the same. There is a problem to be solved and the drapes cover the faces, and stories are usually quiet during anesthesia. However, there is a story that comes in with the patient and there is a time when the drapes are not covering the faces. Side by side, there is a soldier who was blown up by an IED and next to him is a terrorist who was found setting the IED and was blown up by a rocket or missile fired by those trying to protect and give freedom to the fledgling Iraqi nation. How do these doctors deal with this, well part is summed up by a quote from Abraham Lincoln that is written on the plywood wall of the tent where the surgeons rest between cases. “With Malice toward none, with charity for all…..let us strive….to care for him who shall have bore the battle.”

A friend of mine, who is one of the surgeons, and I were talking last night. I was seeing him off as he was returning home for a short time to bury his father who had died suddenly. We talked of what we have seen and the pain of caring for bodies burned, broken, crushed and mangled. We didn’t talk about which bodies, just the bodies we see regularly. I shared with him how I felt just before coming back to Iraq. I was at an Air Force training for operating in a field hospital. During one of the lectures for the doctors we were reviewing procedures for handling severe trauma and there were many pictures. The pictures immediately brought me back to Iraq, even though I was in the middle of San Antonio. As I watched the slides, I said to myself, “I do not want to see any more blown up bodies.” When I came back from my first tour here I asked my wife if Iraq had changed me. I didn’t really feel changed just wanted to see what she thought. She said, “You don’t let the little things bother you as much as you used to.” As I continued to watch the horrific slides, I realized I had been changed and had become much more sensitive to the trauma of war. It was no longer just a Hollywood movie with gory scenes as the slides brought back real memories of the injured, dying and dead.

As I go about my daily duties here, I do not think I am much different than when I am at home. I still laugh and say a lot of silly stuff……but today at church I noticed I cry easily. Because at the very heart of the matter this warrior is really just a child and needs time to jump up on Daddy’s lap and allow him to put ointment on my scrapes and sores. The scrapes and sores are on my soul and I do not ever expect them to be completely healed until heaven. This is probably one of things about war that those who have been a part of it can never really explain to those who haven’t. It’s not because we don’t want to, it is simply because it is hard to describe what it is like to have your soul scraped.

Solis Deo Gloria

More thoughts to come