03/08/06, Alexander Schwabe, The Good Person of Rambam
Post
Injured combatants end up on his operating table every day. But Hany Bahouth tries not to let the war raging around him come too close.
[photo DPA, The entrance to Rambam Hospital's emergency ward. The hospital in Tel Aviv has been receiving numerous wounded soldiers and civilians during the past three weeks.]
Hany Bahouth is a surgeon at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, less than 40 kilometers (25 miles) behind Israel's border with Lebanon. He specializes in the treatment of injuries caused by external violence: bullet wounds, knife wounds, broken bones, contusions, whatever looks shocking and should be avoided by the faint of heart. For three weeks the specialist for has been extremely busy. Now he's mainly treating patients injured in combat -- Israeli soldiers wounded in Lebanon, or civilians injured during one of Hezbollah's Katyusha rocket attacks.
Bahouth says he's hardly spent any time outside the hospital during the past three weeks. The 42-year-old normally starts work between six and seven in the morning and leaves the hospital about 12 hours later. But ever since those injured in combat have started to come to Rambam, he's had no free time at all.
His phone rings sometimes at three in the morning, and he has to go to the operating room in the emergency ward. And given the nature of what he sees there -- "We're dealing with especially bad injuries at the moment," Bahouth says -- not having had breakfast often turns out to be an advantage. The medic describes it soberly: "Shrapnel wounds, mainly on the extremities." A different way of saying it would be: Torn-up arms and legs next to crushed skulls, open bellies, splinters in the heart. Sometimes the injuries are so serious that Bahouth has to amputate. "We're dealing with many very bad cases," he says. Just now a young soldiers had both his legs removed. "Bilateral amputation," Bahouth says, as if medical jargon helped him endure the horror.
"The adrenalin makes you focus."
Bahouth is calm and level-headed -- even though he gets so little rest. Five hours of sleep on a normal day is enough, says the married man and father of two children. He doesn't have time to be plagued by nightmares. "It often happens that I work for 36 hours at a time, without any break at all," he says casually. "If necessary, we operate all night." Where does he get the energy? He shrugs his shoulders. "The adrenalin makes you focus," he says.
Routine helps him deal with stress situations. "When injured people arrive, a team is there ready to care for them within three minutes," Bahouth says. The Israelis have plenty of experience dealing with attacks and large numbers of victims. About 20 wheeled stretchers stand ready outside the hospital, so that injured people can be taken immediately from the ambulance to the operating room.
And then there is the faith in his own abilities that prevents him from losing his cool in heated situations -- even when the bomb sirens whine constantly outside, even when a rocket launched in Lebanon impacts near the hospital. "It's an exceptional situation," the surgeon says, "but no operation or course of treatment has been interrupted yet."
The doctor's outward calm provides a hint of his inner strength. "I believe in the inherent goodness of people," says the man whose daily work would seem to have to teach him the exact opposite. Bahouth won't even condemn a Hezbollah militant -- a religious fanatic prepared to kill for his ideology, and to die for it himself -- one of the people responsible for the human damage that Bahouth has to repair. "I respect humans for their own sake," he insists. "I perceive everyone as an individual." And the individual, he adds, is always good.
No person is worse than any other as such -- the attitude fits the principles of medical ethics. But Bahouth's attitude is better explained in terms of his own biographical background. He's an Israeli citizen with an Arab background. His Palestinian family has lived in Haifa since the 17th century. And a humanism formulated in the most general terms may well make it easier for an Arab to live in a Jewish environment. What is more, Bahouth is not a Muslim Arab. His family is Christian, so he's not just a member of an Arab minority, but also of a minority within that minority.
Bahouth thinks of himself as an atheist, though. "I believe the negative effects of religion outweigh the positive ones," he says. It may well be the lesson learned from living in the war-torn Middle East, where lives have been threatened for millennia.
[photo DPA, The entrance to Rambam Hospital's emergency ward. The hospital in Tel Aviv has been receiving numerous wounded soldiers and civilians during the past three weeks.]
Hany Bahouth is a surgeon at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, less than 40 kilometers (25 miles) behind Israel's border with Lebanon. He specializes in the treatment of injuries caused by external violence: bullet wounds, knife wounds, broken bones, contusions, whatever looks shocking and should be avoided by the faint of heart. For three weeks the specialist for has been extremely busy. Now he's mainly treating patients injured in combat -- Israeli soldiers wounded in Lebanon, or civilians injured during one of Hezbollah's Katyusha rocket attacks.
Bahouth says he's hardly spent any time outside the hospital during the past three weeks. The 42-year-old normally starts work between six and seven in the morning and leaves the hospital about 12 hours later. But ever since those injured in combat have started to come to Rambam, he's had no free time at all.
His phone rings sometimes at three in the morning, and he has to go to the operating room in the emergency ward. And given the nature of what he sees there -- "We're dealing with especially bad injuries at the moment," Bahouth says -- not having had breakfast often turns out to be an advantage. The medic describes it soberly: "Shrapnel wounds, mainly on the extremities." A different way of saying it would be: Torn-up arms and legs next to crushed skulls, open bellies, splinters in the heart. Sometimes the injuries are so serious that Bahouth has to amputate. "We're dealing with many very bad cases," he says. Just now a young soldiers had both his legs removed. "Bilateral amputation," Bahouth says, as if medical jargon helped him endure the horror.
"The adrenalin makes you focus."
Bahouth is calm and level-headed -- even though he gets so little rest. Five hours of sleep on a normal day is enough, says the married man and father of two children. He doesn't have time to be plagued by nightmares. "It often happens that I work for 36 hours at a time, without any break at all," he says casually. "If necessary, we operate all night." Where does he get the energy? He shrugs his shoulders. "The adrenalin makes you focus," he says.
Routine helps him deal with stress situations. "When injured people arrive, a team is there ready to care for them within three minutes," Bahouth says. The Israelis have plenty of experience dealing with attacks and large numbers of victims. About 20 wheeled stretchers stand ready outside the hospital, so that injured people can be taken immediately from the ambulance to the operating room.
And then there is the faith in his own abilities that prevents him from losing his cool in heated situations -- even when the bomb sirens whine constantly outside, even when a rocket launched in Lebanon impacts near the hospital. "It's an exceptional situation," the surgeon says, "but no operation or course of treatment has been interrupted yet."
The doctor's outward calm provides a hint of his inner strength. "I believe in the inherent goodness of people," says the man whose daily work would seem to have to teach him the exact opposite. Bahouth won't even condemn a Hezbollah militant -- a religious fanatic prepared to kill for his ideology, and to die for it himself -- one of the people responsible for the human damage that Bahouth has to repair. "I respect humans for their own sake," he insists. "I perceive everyone as an individual." And the individual, he adds, is always good.
No person is worse than any other as such -- the attitude fits the principles of medical ethics. But Bahouth's attitude is better explained in terms of his own biographical background. He's an Israeli citizen with an Arab background. His Palestinian family has lived in Haifa since the 17th century. And a humanism formulated in the most general terms may well make it easier for an Arab to live in a Jewish environment. What is more, Bahouth is not a Muslim Arab. His family is Christian, so he's not just a member of an Arab minority, but also of a minority within that minority.
Bahouth thinks of himself as an atheist, though. "I believe the negative effects of religion outweigh the positive ones," he says. It may well be the lesson learned from living in the war-torn Middle East, where lives have been threatened for millennia.
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