Big Girl's Blouse.

On Wednesday we went to film a Kabul public hospital in action and interview some doctors, nurses, midwives and patients. There was also a meeting of health-care workers from the provinces that Dr K. thought might also be interesting to record. The meeting started at 7.30. Damn those medical folk like early starts! By mid morning we're following Dr Rick (an American) around the hospital, I'm more or less filming constantly as Karen interviews him about the things we encounter - the facilities, the equipment, patients he's checking up on - when without warning I find myself being instructed to take off my Nikes and put on a pair of black plastic sandals, followed by some pale green and largely formless trousers with matching shirt (known as "scrubs" I believe) and a bandanna to complete the look. A glance up at a sign confirms my suspicion - Operating Theatre. We move on into a small hallway/anti chamber that has two of it's walls lined with sinks and taps where Dr Rick, Dr K. and perhaps half a dozen other doctors/nurses commence scrubbing their hands and forearms. I shuffle through after them into the Operating Theatre proper which is full of large and complicated machines (though sadly no machine that goes "Bing!") and a young boy of maybe 7 years of age, laying on the operating table already unconscious. (Actually there was the machine that goes "Bing!", it just did so rather more quietly than they do in the movies.) I'm briefly instructed as to where I can and can't go in the room, Dr Rick is handed a scalpel and proceeds to make a 15cm incision right across the small boys' stomach to remove a huge cyst that had been precipitated by eating contaminated food.

Now when it comes to blood - mine or anyone elses - I'm generally a Big Girl's Blouse and squeamish to the point where I could throw-a-wobbly at the sight of the smallest drop. But there in the Operating Theatre, with litres of the stuff sloshing around everywhere and a surgeon up to his wrists in the gaping gash across this little tykes belly, I was absolutely fine. The thing that made the difference was simple and two-fold. Firstly I had a job of work to do, which gives me a different focus on events around me, and secondly the camera itself acted as a kind of filter between me and the "real" world. You lot may not give a shit, but I was certainly quite proud of myself.

Dr Rick had done the slicing and pulled the cyst - a pussy mass the size of a tennis ball that came out in a few smaller chunks - while Dr K. stood by in readiness. But when it came to sewing the little chap up, Dr K. was right in there with needle and thread, doing an awesome job. She may still have a bit to learn about film making, but I think she's a fine surgeon.




Much more to write about the Cure Hospital - we went back the next day to find the little boy recovering well - but it's late, I'm shattered, fly back to London tomorrow via Dubai (which is totally out of the way!) so will publish this post and sign off to bed now. See if I can't slip in another before I push off tomorrow.