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Forty-third Job of Bob - In-country war-culture writer: Iraq, Kurdistan, Turkey Part III - Date with fate post 60 - Never shot at once, but still bleeding to death in Iraq
This entry was posted on 9/29/2011 1:30 AM and is filed under Jobs of Bob, Fate Fairies.
"Of course you should go. It would indicate some success on our part don't you think, Bob?" My doctor said.
My doc is a well traveled medical man - he's been to every "bad-lands" on earth on some medical mission or another, at one time or another. As for me, there was some angst, regarding my first trip to the war zone in Iraq, considering my blood and heart condition. My doc did not bat an eye as he sent me on my way in persuit of my project. It is the new world we live in. People live with all kinds of cancers, conditions, and difficulties. The treatment methods and philosophy for my own humble blood and heart condition has drastically changed over the decades. They used to park me in the hospital when the condition flared up, saying movement would kill me; now, they roust me back to work, proclaiming that being in a hospital bed will...., kill me. Us lucky survivors of health challenges and the medical industry that treats said conditions are mainstreamed amongst the population.
Traveling to Iraq was a stretch though, and I knew it. Expect no doctors at one's beckoning call, no calling 911, no heat to stay warm in the mountains, no electricity, no air conditioning in the desert, no help, few paved roads, no maps, no police, dirty water, and absolutely no ambulances in the rural areas that I would be skirting through.
I was well on my way through Iraq and nearing Iran. My mafia driver of course drove like a madman. There was no shoulders on the narrow road girdling the mountains. A truck came around a corner, he was passing a gaggle of cars, likewise driving like a madman; he ran my driver and I into the dirt and rocks. The ride jostled me around but the driver righted our car. All he did was light up another cigarette, and change the track on the cassette player - a different Kurdish melody.
I usually rode with my arm out the window, when we blasted into the dirt and rocks, I must have clenched the window frame with my forearm. A day later a nasty bruise appeared. I contacted my wife via our code, and mentioned that I had been bounced around, bruised, was tired, sore, but apparently ok. The soldiers there go through 10 far worse episodes, all before breakfast every day.
By the time I had finished my work near the Iranian border - it was the area Saddam Hussein had poison gassed the Kurds in the late 1980s - the bruising on my arm had spread. By the time I was leaving the country at the Turkish border a couple weeks later, my whole upper right side had dark black and blue marks. What was happening? Other than this abnormality, my time in Iraq had saw no military or criminal skirmishes. I weaved in and out of the bad stuff, seeking out the culture of the beleaguered people living in the war zone.
When I got to my fixer dude in Turkey where I had staged up to enter Iraq and rest after my exit, I had trouble walking. My Turkish pal expressed concern. The condition leveled off as I partook in Kurdish culture, music, and homemade wine for a couple days. My Turkish liaison sent me off and I headed to Van, Turkey. On the bus ride to Van, at this point the bruising and mild pain had manifested itself with severe pain and my whole right side was black and blue. Also, I was starting to experience rather pesky headaches.
I set up in Van a couple days - the Kurdish region just south of the infamous Mount Ararat of biblical fame. But because of my condition I cut my Turkish war zone work short and flew back to the Turkish Capital of Ankara to rest in my little hotel in Ulus the old part of the city, before flying home.
Back in the Ankara, it was not going to work out either, I could no longer walk well, and could not stand the pain. I enlisted the confidence of a British guy that lived at my hotel and worked in Ankara. I had befriended him on my stay there before leaving for Iraq.
"Nothing like a beer and a the watching of a good football match on the telly to cure what ails you," he said to me with an apprehensive smile. I had handed him a paper with all my vital information such as my full name and home address, Heide's information, and a way to contact her if I should kick the bucket.
The next day, off I went to the diplomatic neighborhood of Ankara. The hotel desk man had given me a note for the bus driver explaining to him in Turkish that I was ill. He gave me the long ride cross town for free. A day before I visited a wood shop near my little hotel and had bought a wooden cane to help me walk.
Across from the U.S. Embassy is a hospital that foreigners sometimes use. I held my breath at what this might cost me. But, it was clear to me, no one would let me on an international flight home, looking and acting like a half dead man. To my surprise it was quiet in their tiny emergency room. None of the staff spoke English. A young nurse took my vitals while smiling with bouts of quite nervous laughter. I had my Turkish language book.
"Blood, heart, problems," I had wrote on a note for her. She smiled and fixated on my tattoos. Back in America, a tattoo of a naked lady with a rose and another in a firefighters hat, along with all the other stuff I have on my arm seemed right at home. Here in this 99 percent Muslim country, my crass body art display seem woefully inappropriate.
After a bit, a young doctor entered the room and looked me over. "A test of two," he said in broken English.
After the cute chuckling young nurse took some blood from me with a needle the size of an ink pen, I waited for a half hour or so.
The doc came back in and said, "Your coagulation level (International Normalized Ratio - INR - used to be called Prothrombin Time - pro-time) is off our scale." It should read about 2.5 or so in my case, to clot my blood normal. Their machine only went up to 10, but I was way above that. That would explain the bruising and the headaches. My blood was so thin I was bleeding internally. The tiny veinuals and arterioles at the microscopic ends of the body's blood system were leaking like a sieve. I was slowly bleeding to death.
I had rarely had trouble with too thin of blood. My troubles always manifested in hyper-clotting, which is likewise deadly.
"You could die," my young Turkish doctor said rather nonchalantly. "You must stop taking your blood thinner. Come back every day until you either die or are somewhat better."
So for a week I dutifully went cross town to his little emergency clinic and the cute chuckling nurse took my blood with her ink pen thick needle. It never got below six on their INR scale. That number alone is dangerous on a good day. My doc would have plunked me in the hospital - new treatment philosophies not-with-standing.
"I want to give you a blood transfusion," my young doctor said after a couple days. I pondered this and asked him if I might decline.
"Of course," he said. "We abide by international ethics." He looked hurt.
The impetus of my refusal was me not wanting to forever have on my record that I had received a blood transfusion in a Third World country.
"I have emailed your doctor in West Consin," the young doctor said on my fifth visit. "We had a good chat. You can go home now, he will take care of you. Go to him as soon as you get home. But no more blood thinner until you speak to him. Remember your INR seems to be stuck on six for now - way too high."
I had never had this problem before, it was always an over-clotting issue. But here I was slowly bleeding to death. It was one of the most painful experiences I have ever gone through. Pain killers had little effect.
To my surprise, the total bill for all the visits and tests was a whopping..., fifty Bucks. And thinking back, I never saw another patient in that small quiet emergency room.
The only serendipitous moment was at Heathrow Airport in London. A pretty Indian woman working for British Airlines ran to me as I stood in a line of four-hundred people waiting to check in, and pulled me and my cane to the front of the line.
What caused the abnormal reaction to my normally rock solid reliable medications? Who knows? - stress, loss of 30 pounds, little sleep in the war zone, poor diet, heat in the desert, freezing in the mountains. For sure it had nothing to do with the crazy taxi ride. The bruising, pain, and black and blue would have come regardless of my activities and good or bad fortune.
A young medical resident in my clinic back home had once warned, "I am concerned Bob is taking so much blood medicine he could suffer a random reaction down the road at some point."
The older docs brushed the Resident's concerns aside. How prophetic the young Resident was. It was not funny now as I struggled in Turkey.
I made it - apparently, but the odd experience will always be part of me.
My first visit to Iraq, and I was never shot at once, but came very, very, damn close to..., bleeding to death anyway.
Note: This blog "Jobs of Bob" Category does not list the jobs chronologically - I write about the experiences as they pop up in my memory and I often revisit an older job. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Jobs of Bob Page for an ordered chronology.
Note: This blog "Fate Fairies" Category does not list the brushes with fate chronologically - I write about the experiences as they pop up in my memory and I often revisit an older event. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Fate Fairies Page for an ordered chronology.
Wisconsin Military Service Person Special Mention of the Week
(each week Cooldadiomedia mentions a Wisconsin service person killed in Iraq or Afghanistan)
Marine Corporal Michael Conrad Nolen, 22, Spring Valley, Wisconsin, was killed on Monday, June 27, 2011 in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Corporal Nolen was participating in combat operations when his unit was attacked by a roadside bomb. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
The Web site wqow.com out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, noted Nolen grew up in Spring Valley, then his family moved to River Falls when he was in elementary school; they moved back to Spring Valley and he attended his senior year of high school in that community. The Web site went on to say Michael participated in cross country and also the school play. Nolen graduated from Spring Valley High School in 2007. For a time Michael worked at Crystal Cave in Spring Valley giving guided tours of the cave.
According to mygatewaynews.com Nolen had been in the Marines for three and a half years; he had another year and a half left in his enlistment.
An obituary regarding Nolen posted on legacy.com and another posted on mygatewaynews.com indicate that at the time of his death Mairne Corporal Michael C. Nolen was survived by his parents Timothy and Judith Nolen; sisters Christina Jensen and Melanie; brother Alexander; and, aunts and uncles Nettie Nolen, Michelle (Randy) Nolen-Karras, Tom (Cindy) Nolen, Ted (Ann) Nolen, Susan (Jay) Henning, and Stephen Conrad. He was preceded in death by his brother Sam and his grandparents. Nolen was laid to rest at Fort Snelling National Cemetery in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Marine Corporal Michael C. Nolen was the 34th Wisconsin military service person killed in the war in Afghanistan since October of 2001.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
102,654 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003 (actually documented).
10,125 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,480 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1784 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
318 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
951 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
1 American/Coalition casualty in Libyan "Operation Odyssey Dawn" since March, 2011.
32,194 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
592 Wisconsin military service persons have been wounded in Iraq since Spring 2003.
14,094 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
192 Wisconsin military service persons have been wounded in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
107 Wisconsin military service persons have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
36 Wisconsin military service persons have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
3 Wisconsin military service persons have been killed in the U.S. related to "The War on Terror" since September, 2001.
150 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
22 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since September, 2001.
5 journalists (regional and independents) have been killed in Libya since March, 2011.
Wisconsin military service person special mention of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; washingtonpost.com; thehighground.org; Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs; iraqbodycount.org; www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf; and, icasualties.org .
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