Skip to content
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Book
  • Careers
  • Podcast
  • Recommended
  • Speaking
  • All
  • Physician
  • Practice
  • Policy
  • Finance
  • Conditions
  • .edu
  • Patient
  • Meds
  • Tech
  • Social
  • Video
    • All
    • Physician
    • Practice
    • Policy
    • Finance
    • Conditions
    • .edu
    • Patient
    • Meds
    • Tech
    • Social
    • Video
    • About
    • Contact
    • Contribute
    • Book
    • Careers
    • Podcast
    • Recommended
    • Speaking

The trauma of a combat doctor in Iraq

Reagan Anderson, DO
Physician
November 9, 2020
Share
Tweet
Share

An excerpt from Universal Death Care.

Machine gun fire ripped me open—From Left to Right. There were too many bullets. No way could I feel each wound. They blended together like a single strike of lightning. I was paralyzed by pain. It had taken root in me. The sorrow at what I had lost was so pure and consuming that I knew it belonged to everyone—it was the same sorrow all of mankind had experienced throughout the ages. At first, I only tasted trauma — oppressive and manipulative. The trauma murdered my soul, and then I felt sorrow and evil rip my guts out, From Left to Right. Most dreams are nonsensical, just a product of the imagination and others are so grounded in reality that the mind remakes the moment, trying to master it. These nightmares become visceral. They have their own life.

When I shot up out of bed, I reached for my weapon and chambered a round, and then my eyes focused on my stomach. The pain was still there. My clothes were intact but soaked in sweat. There was no blood, no wound. I had never experienced anything that powerful while sleeping, and while I had no idea what it meant, I knew something was very wrong. It was adrenaline, fear, anxiety, empathy, and a horrible innate sense of self-preservation that was tearing me apart.

I was not equipped to process whatever happened to me, so “sleeping” was no longer an option. The nightmare continued to surface in flashes since the locals were still celebrating my arrival with sporadic mortar fire. Everyone expected me to pass out and be unaffected by the noise after spending a week traveling from Camp Pendleton, California to Fallujah, Iraq.

I put on my clothes and went to the communications room at Recon BN to ask if everything was okay. And while it should have been abundantly clear that nothing would ever be “okay” again, my goal was set—I could make others’ lives better. I needed to bring some humanity, love, compassion, and talent to this war while trying first to do no harm.

The Marines probably thought I had suffered a head injury because I kept asking the one manning the radio, “Is everything okay???” They replied that everything was fine, but they had to be mistaken because my stomach felt like I was about to give birth to an alien; it clawed at my insides. Since I had only met a few people in the battalion at that point, several Marines were already questioning the sanity of their new Battalion Surgeon. By the grunting in response, evidently annoyed, I decided to go back to my room and try to sleep.

Nope. Not happening.

The adrenaline electrified my body, and my soul knew that this was not a coincidence. It meant something. I got up again and went back to the communications room, asking if everything was quiet.

They assured me it was.

I tried to familiarize myself with Recon BN and got ready for duty. I wasn’t hungry, but I asked where breakfast was anyway, then headed in that direction. First, though, I checked in with Fallujah Surgical, the makeshift building where traumas were stabilized before the patients could be transferred to a higher echelon of care in Baghdad. The building wasn’t suitable for livestock, let alone surgery.

There was blood on the floor of the central “stabilizing bay,” which was a tight 400 square feet, plus a “Surgical Room” that was not fit to dissect worms. There was enough space for two patients in the stabilizing bay, which were filled with Iraqis and a mess of medical personnel tending them. I believe one was an adult who had been shot in the leg. The other was a child, about 11-years-old, who had been nearly sliced in half at the waist by a Marine’s machinegun fire, From Left to Right. The child was writhing in pain as the medical assets were doing everything possible to save her life. In the chaos, she singled me out, and I looked at her. We both knew something about the other that we could not identify. Her initial resuscitation was almost over, and she was about to go into the Surgical Room for further stabilization. All I could do was stand there while a flurry of activity coursed around us. Her stomach was filleted open, and while mine was intact, we shared a moment that defies logic. She knew that she was about to die at the hands of the very people who wounded her.

This is so wrong.

You’re supposed to have decades left to live at eleven, not seconds.

Few things in life have hit me as hard as that moment, and the incident changed the course of both of our lives. She endured a living hell during the resuscitation, and then the recovery afterward. For me, the brutality and senselessness of that scene – the innocent little girl with her stomach ripped open, the medical personnel trying desperately to save her life in an inadequate medical facility – shook me to the core of my being. Even today that scene is vivid in my memory and it has helped shape my conviction that medicine must be about providing the best possible medical care as and when needed and not be driven by greed or hobbled by bureaucracy or manipulated by attorneys. That day in that makeshift surgical center, medical personnel did everything in their power to save that child and nothing else in the world mattered. Contrast that with American veterans who today, in the USA, cannot get adequate treatment for the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual wounds they suffered doing the job their country called on them to do because of government red tape, frequently capricious decisions by non-medical clerks in insurance companies, or litigation that drive doctors to practice defensive medicine to try and protect themselves from lawsuits. In Iraq, in a war, in substandard conditions, an Iraqi child’s life was all that mattered. There was a time in the USA when that was also the prime directive in medical care. That time has come and gone. We need to get it back.

My own dream-induced pain started at the same time this child was mowed down. Then and there is when and where my faith in God died because God, the higher power, had allowed this unspeakable nightmare to happen. My hope for the future evaporated, all while helplessness chewed through my guts From Left to Right.

This was the same moment I realized that humanity is connected in a definitive, tangible, and spiritual way. A trigger-happy and scared Marine was likewise connected. He made an understandable mistake in the heat of the moment and accidentally destroyed this innocent little girl. His solitary action grew into horror, altering all of our lives. We are all intrinsically connected, and yet, we point weapons at each other, pulling triggers, and then we deal with a fragmented, amputated existence. War eviscerates us all.

ADVERTISEMENT

Reagan Anderson is a dermatologist and author of Universal Death Care.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com

Prev

The benefits of early clinical exposure in medical education

November 9, 2020 Kevin 0
…
Next

You have options when it comes to board certification

November 9, 2020 Kevin 4
…

Tagged as: Emergency Medicine

Post navigation

< Previous Post
The benefits of early clinical exposure in medical education
Next Post >
You have options when it comes to board certification

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

  • Osler and the doctor-patient relationship

    Leonard Wang
  • Why is trauma activation so expensive?

    Skeptical Scalpel, MD
  • Finding a new doctor is like dating

    R. Lynn Barnett
  • Doctor, how are you, really?

    Deborah Courtney
  • How to combat imposter syndrome in medical school

    Margaret Hogan Smoot
  • Be a human first and a doctor second

    Sarah Murad

More in Physician

  • When rock bottom is a turning point: Why the turmoil at HHS may be a blessing in disguise

    Muhamad Aly Rifai, MD
  • How grief transformed a psychiatrist’s approach to patient care

    Devina Maya Wadhwa, MD
  • Fear of other people’s opinions nearly killed me. Here’s what freed me.

    Jillian Rigert, MD, DMD
  • What independent and locum tenens doctors need to know about fair market value

    Dennis Hursh, Esq
  • How one simple breakfast question can transform patient care

    Dr. Damane Zehra
  • Nurses are the backbone of medicine—and they deserve better

    Matthew Moeller, MD
  • Most Popular

  • Past Week

    • What’s driving medical students away from primary care?

      ​​Vineeth Amba, MPH, Archita Goyal, and Wayne Altman, MD | Education
    • A faster path to becoming a doctor is possible—here’s how

      Ankit Jain | Education
    • Why no medical malpractice firm responded to my scientific protocol

      Howard Smith, MD | Physician
    • A world without antidepressants: What could possibly go wrong?

      Tomi Mitchell, MD | Meds
    • Reimagining diabetes care with nutrition, not prescriptions

      William Hsu, MD | Conditions
    • Bridging the digital divide: Addressing health inequities through home-based AI solutions

      Dr. Sreeram Mullankandy | Tech
  • Past 6 Months

    • Internal Medicine 2025: inspiration at the annual meeting

      American College of Physicians | Physician
    • The silent crisis hurting pain patients and their doctors

      Kayvan Haddadan, MD | Physician
    • What’s driving medical students away from primary care?

      ​​Vineeth Amba, MPH, Archita Goyal, and Wayne Altman, MD | Education
    • What happened to real care in health care?

      Christopher H. Foster, PhD, MPA | Policy
    • Are quotas a solution to physician shortages?

      Jacob Murphy | Education
    • How to build a culture where physicians feel valued [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
  • Recent Posts

    • Reimagining diabetes care with nutrition, not prescriptions

      William Hsu, MD | Conditions
    • Why funding cuts to academic medical centers impact all of us [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • What’s driving medical students away from primary care?

      ​​Vineeth Amba, MPH, Archita Goyal, and Wayne Altman, MD | Education
    • When rock bottom is a turning point: Why the turmoil at HHS may be a blessing in disguise

      Muhamad Aly Rifai, MD | Physician
    • How grief transformed a psychiatrist’s approach to patient care

      Devina Maya Wadhwa, MD | Physician
    • A speech pathologist’s key to better, safer patient care

      Adena Dacy, CCC-SLP | Conditions

Subscribe to KevinMD and never miss a story!

Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.


Find jobs at
Careers by KevinMD.com

Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now.

Learn more

View 2 Comments >

Founded in 2004 by Kevin Pho, MD, KevinMD.com is the web’s leading platform where physicians, advanced practitioners, nurses, medical students, and patients share their insight and tell their stories.

Social

  • Like on Facebook
  • Follow on Twitter
  • Connect on Linkedin
  • Subscribe on Youtube
  • Instagram

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

  • Most Popular

  • Past Week

    • What’s driving medical students away from primary care?

      ​​Vineeth Amba, MPH, Archita Goyal, and Wayne Altman, MD | Education
    • A faster path to becoming a doctor is possible—here’s how

      Ankit Jain | Education
    • Why no medical malpractice firm responded to my scientific protocol

      Howard Smith, MD | Physician
    • A world without antidepressants: What could possibly go wrong?

      Tomi Mitchell, MD | Meds
    • Reimagining diabetes care with nutrition, not prescriptions

      William Hsu, MD | Conditions
    • Bridging the digital divide: Addressing health inequities through home-based AI solutions

      Dr. Sreeram Mullankandy | Tech
  • Past 6 Months

    • Internal Medicine 2025: inspiration at the annual meeting

      American College of Physicians | Physician
    • The silent crisis hurting pain patients and their doctors

      Kayvan Haddadan, MD | Physician
    • What’s driving medical students away from primary care?

      ​​Vineeth Amba, MPH, Archita Goyal, and Wayne Altman, MD | Education
    • What happened to real care in health care?

      Christopher H. Foster, PhD, MPA | Policy
    • Are quotas a solution to physician shortages?

      Jacob Murphy | Education
    • How to build a culture where physicians feel valued [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
  • Recent Posts

    • Reimagining diabetes care with nutrition, not prescriptions

      William Hsu, MD | Conditions
    • Why funding cuts to academic medical centers impact all of us [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • What’s driving medical students away from primary care?

      ​​Vineeth Amba, MPH, Archita Goyal, and Wayne Altman, MD | Education
    • When rock bottom is a turning point: Why the turmoil at HHS may be a blessing in disguise

      Muhamad Aly Rifai, MD | Physician
    • How grief transformed a psychiatrist’s approach to patient care

      Devina Maya Wadhwa, MD | Physician
    • A speech pathologist’s key to better, safer patient care

      Adena Dacy, CCC-SLP | Conditions

MedPage Today Professional

An Everyday Health Property Medpage Today
  • Terms of Use | Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • DMCA Policy
All Content © KevinMD, LLC
Site by Outthink Group

The trauma of a combat doctor in Iraq
2 comments

Comments are moderated before they are published. Please read the comment policy.

Loading Comments...