Author:
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: July 16, 2006
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/iep/sunday/story/8578.html
Introduction: The doctors worked all night
At midnight, standing outside the makeshift
mortuary near the emergency and casualties ward of the Lokmanya Tilak Municipal
General Hospital at Sion, the dean's standing instructions to Dr Rajeev Kumar,
(communities and medicine) who was also in charge of co-ordination couldn't
be more precise: ''Clear everything here. Make way for the blast victims.''
It was later at 2 am that Kumar said: ''The
entire hospital, staff from every department, interns and doctors were on
standby alert. Mass casualty was on its way.''
And as bodies were brought in from blast sites
in trucks, autorickshaws and ambulances, it was the city's medical fraternity
that stretched 16 long hours stitching Mumbai back to life.
Not even their gruesome daily routines could
prepare them for the disfigured bodies. ''So much blood,'' recalls Nartaki
Devidasi, a nurse for three decades, about the bloody trail at the Bahkti
Vedanta hospital at Mira Road, where victims of the Mira Road blast were rushed.
Patients in shock, unable to remember their
names, doling out wrong telephone numbers, they took it all calmly.
For the interns who were called in, this was
a lesson no classroom could allow. Jitendra Mandwade, 23, an intern at Sion
Hospital, recalls holding a patient's earlobe in one hand and a suture in
the other-certainly a little early in the syllabus, he admits. They were called
in from their annual bash, cancelled when the alert was sounded at 7 pm.
Parag Chaudhari, 23, another intern, adds
their role also expanded to being ''stretcher boys''. Because the regular
wardboys were washing the bloodied floors.
Sion Hospital's head neurosurgeon Dr Alok
Sharma conducted a two-hour surgery through the night, on Mashreq Bank executive
Joga Rao (50), who was taking a local home to Goregaon. ''Rao was rushed in
on Tuesday night with a badly fractured skull, shrapnel fragments and a lot
of blood loss. We worked on saving him for over two hours, he is semi-conscious
now,'' says Sharma. Rao's son Naresh, 22, who flew in on Wednesday from Hyderabad,
says the doctors were ''superb''. His dad's recovering fast.
