Doctor Henry Marsh

Tuesday nights on SBS at the moment are medical night, starting with "Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery", a very informative show.  But last night I caught the better part of a documentary called "The English Surgeon" which was screened later in the night.

The central subject is Dr. Henry Marsh, a British neurosurgeon who has been making trips, in his own spare time, to the Ukraine to assist an out-of-the-box doctor named Igor Kurilets.  I use the term more for his treatment setup than his personality.  He works in a country historically dogged by the Communist regime and its manifold ways and structures that have left it with a health system, among other systems, that many western nations would consider barely functioning.

Unfortunately I missed the beginning of the show, unaware that it was on.  I was hooked once I stumbled across it, even though it was a quarter done.  In one of the first scenes I caught it showed Dr. Marsh, annoyed at the bureaucratic tangle of the UK health system, leaving his computer and stalking off to cool down.  He explains to the camera once at home that he is taking medical equipment to the Ukraine on his next trip, displaying drill bits that the UK system disposes of after one use.  They have a plastic insert, so cant be re-sterilised, and at £80 for each one, he estimates that they use, in his hospital alone, 10 of them each week.  And then they throw them out.  £800 a week, £4000 a year, more or less.  He and Igor open one up after he arrives in the Ukraine, remove the plastic insert, sterilise it, and it is soon put to good use with a Ryobi cordless drill to remove a brain tumour from a young man suffering epileptic fits.

Dr. Marsh himself proved to be fascinating man of some depth.  Throughout the documentary, a young girl named Tanya is mentioned.  His face and speech seem to change whenever she is discussed.  Dr. Marsh had bought her to the UK a few years before the documentary was shown to remove a tumour that had paralysed the side of her face, after Moscow and Kiev surgeons said it was inoperable.  He looked and sounded genuinely haunted by the fact that Tanya had suffered as a result of what he had done.  Her quality of life suffered after two operations he performed on her, her death seemingly inevitable by Ukrainian standards, but possibly not by UK standards.  He visits her mother at her home at the end of the documentary, wholly welcomed by the family.

He sits in Dr. Kurilets office meeting with patients, honestly and rapidly assessing their chances, realistic that the majority of cases are inoperable or too far developed to render enough assistance because of the systems in place.  While a brain scan may only cost $50 to $100, many Ukrainians cannot spare that amount.  And when they do manage to, or are forced to through physical problems caused by the tumours, they often result in a dire prognosis.  We see a young girl who is already blind from her tumour growth.  The grandmother who is told her young granddaughter is inoperable and left with a year or so to live.  The 23 year old woman with the spreading tumour that no surgery anywhere could repair.  And Marian, the young man with the epileptic seizures who is operated on with the home handyman tools available.

I hope I can see all of this in the future. If you get a chance to watch it, it's well worth seeing.

Handy Henry Marsh at the Times Online

Henry Marsh interview at NPR.org (transcript and download at US National Public Radio)

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DRABCD!

I had an interesting weekend.

On Saturday I attended a first aid course at a friends house with several other people, the first one I've ever done. As we all have young children, we dealt in the majority with potential situations that may arise with kids.

A most enlightening day, naturally. How to administer CPR, dealing with bleeding, broken bones, burns, bites and stings. All those typical kid-related injuries you might expect. Much of it had cross-over into adult treatment as well, the principles the same just scaled up or down to suit. The response acronym is a bit hard, but I guess we cant all have R.I.C.E. and H.A.R.M. to remember.

D.R.A.B.C.D. !!

Danger
Response
Airway
Breathing
CPR
Defibrillation

I dont know that we'll be going out to buy a defibrillator in a hurry though. If we had someone in the house at risk of cardiac problems or with serious issues, then yes, they'd be a very important item to have.

On Sunday I did 40km on the bike, just getting home before it really got hot and humid. Spent the whole ride chatting and thinking about "if that guy there falls off and breaks his arm, I know what to do now..."

I've been home alone since Wednesday, so got all the washing out of the way before I attacked anything else. By that time, though, it was really too hot to do anything else outside, and washing the car could wait. I moved the chainring on my single speed bike. Its definitely quieter now, so the 5 minute exercise was worthwhile.

The Sunday afternoon storm rolled in thick and quick, but not as much rain as I'd thought. Still, it took the humidity out of the air a bit and cleaned a bit of grime from roads and cars. Lucky I didnt wash it during the heat, cause it would've just been marked by the rain anyway.

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