Writing from work in Ashdod, Israel
I worked night shift last night. Usually my shift starts at 23:00. But we are on a war schedule so now it starts at 19:00. Dinner time. I have to walk out of home to cries of “Mommy, I don’t want you to go.” The drive is stressful. Usually I listen to podcasts. Now I’m tuned to the radio that will alert me to rockets potentially falling from the sky. I’m scanning the heavens when I hear an alert for Rishon, an area I’m approaching and will be driving through in five minutes’ time. Far enough away that I don’t have to get out the car and lie flat on the side of the freeway. But as I approach, people are still doing just that. I continue on my way, but notice that traffic is starting to back up in the opposite direction. Then a whole chain of emergency vehicles tries to get through – ambulance, police, fire… something big must have happened. I whisper a small prayer that no one is seriously hurt.
An uneventful but stress-filled 30 minutes later and I’m walking into chaos in our emergency department in Ashdod. There was a siren here 15 minutes ago as well. During the course of the day, twice, they cleaned out one side of the ED in preparation for a mass casualty event that never happened – injured soldiers were rather diverted to other hospitals. Two of them died. One from my hometown. Now there is an elderly couple who were both blown backwards off their feet as a rocket hit the apartment next door to them. Both are physically unharmed, but scared and worried about not being able to go home to their apartment that is now without windows.
Turns out the incident on the opposite side of the road as I was on my way in, was a large piece of rocket shrapnel that fell onto the road, causing the car immediately behind it to suffer a blast-type effect. The driver came to us with a perforated tympanic membrane and multiple pieces of shrapnel and glass embedded in his face. So many patients with palpitations, chest pain, panic attacks…An old lady in deep septic shock because she has been ill for two weeks but her family were too scared to take her out the house…the ramifications of this terror are so far-reaching.
In the early hours of the morning we get a notification that multiple injured soldiers are being evacuated by helicopter from the front lines. Again we rush to prepare. Clear out anyone who can go. Divide duties. Go outside to wait. And then we watch as the heli flies over us, onward to a bigger hospital with more capabilities. All I can think of is the mother who is going to get the phone call she has been dreading.
I leave my shift a bit early as I have another commitment today. I get back to my home city with 30 minutes to spare. And instead of just getting where I need to go early, I go home for a precious half hour to have a shower, grab a cup of fresh coffee, and more than anything, kiss my three sleeping babies.
Then it’s off to a location in the North where I spend the day in a hot and crowded tent set up as a field hospital. I’ve joined a project that trains army medics to perform life-saving field procedures. I hope what we do today can make a small difference. Even if it helps save one soldier in this war, one son, one husband, one father – it is worth it. I finally get back home late in the afternoon. I have been awake for going on 36 hours. I’m exhausted and dirty and so excited to hug my kids again. They say יחד ננצח – together we will succeed. But we have already lost so much. Nothing is normal. Nothing is routine. Tensions are high. This is what it is to be an ED doctor in Israel today.
