October 9, 2011 - His U.S. military helicopter had gone down in the rugged terrain of southeast Afghanistan, and medics rushed the young soldier to Dr. Kenneth Azarow's surgical team.Azarow had never seen a human in such pain.
During a two-hour span, he pumped the soldier with 40 milligrams of morphine — two to three times more than he would give a person with bones smashed in a car crash — and still the soldier screamed.
Despite his injuries, the soldier survived and was airlifted from Azarow's small combat surgical unit to a hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
The case was one of hundreds Azarow encountered as a U.S. Army trauma surgeon and clinical commander during deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Azarow, now a pediatric surgeon at Children's Hospital & Medical Center, said the combat surgical experience serves him today as he treats young patients in Omaha.
He faced cases while deployed that he had never seen in the United States. The common thread between his overseas cases and those here is the feeling he gets when a patient recovers, whether it was a broad-shouldered Marine returning to his unit or a child returning to school.
"The satisfaction is the same,'' Azarow said. read more>>>
No comments:
Post a Comment