Into the Fire: My Journey Through Neurosurgery Chaos

Chapter 3: A Life in Shadows

The first few months after I started working in the neurosurgery emergency ward were difficult beyond what I had ever imagined, not just because of the stress of the job but because of what I had left behind. My son was only a few months old when I took on this responsibility. It should have been a time to be at home, to enjoy the company of my wife and newborn child, to experience the joys of fatherhood. But that wasn't the reality.

My son suffered from colic during that period, and though my wife did everything she could to soothe him, I was far from being the kind of father I wanted to be. Exhausted from the grueling hours at the hospital, I could barely handle hearing his cries, let alone helping to care for him. I was so fatigued that my patience was thin, and the energy to be present for my family simply wasn't there. My wife shouldered it all. I can't imagine what would have happened to our family if it weren't for her unwavering sacrifice during those years.

The truth is, I didn't see the light of day for almost two years. I left for work every morning before the sun rose, around 5:30 a.m., and returned home well past midnight. When I was at home, I spent most of my time resting, trying to recover from the physical and mental exhaustion. My wife carried the weight of our family life-housework, childcare, even social events. If there was a family gathering or a celebration, I wasn't there. While my wife and son were surrounded by family, I was either at the hospital, in the middle of a grueling shift, or too tired to participate in anything.

My friends during those two years weren't from the outside world. They were the nurses, residents, and on-duty staff in the hospital. They were my companions in this strange, surreal life I had fallen into. The neurosurgery interns, who rotated through the department for one-month stints, were like passing figures in a long-running television series, here one day and gone the next. There wasn't even enough time to build friendships with them-there was barely time to breathe.

Each day felt like a scene from a horror movie. The endless shifts, the constant pressure, and the fear of making a mistake that could cost someone their life wore me down in ways I couldn't fully explain. My life felt like an unending TV series, with no escape from the plot. Each day blurred into the next, and the only relief came from the occasional moments of kindness and support from the nurses. They seemed to have nerves of steel, handling their tasks with remarkable grace. Even though their shifts were often shorter than mine, they faced the same grueling nights. Yet, they somehow managed to live a life outside the hospital. They would go to the cinema together, plan outings, and share jokes. That kind of normalcy was a distant dream for me.

One morning, I arrived at the hospital, bracing myself for another long day. As I entered the ward, I noticed a young boy, around 12 years old, lying on a stretcher just outside. Mehdi, one of the nurses, approached me and told me that the boy had been brought in after a wrestling injury and couldn't move his leg. The screening hadn't confirmed anything yet, but Mehdi suspected he was our patient.

I instructed Mehdi to place a precautionary collar under the boy's head and wait for the neurosurgery resident to assess him. I knew from experience that we couldn't be too careful with injuries like his. Then, as often happened in the emergency ward, I was pulled away. A critically ill patient required immediate attention, and I rushed off to the CT scan department, leaving the boy in Mehdi's care. It was a chaotic morning, and what should have taken a few minutes stretched into nearly half an hour.

When I returned, I was horrified to find that the boy was no longer under our care. Instead, he had been moved to the internal medicine department, where a resident was examining him for suspected meningitis. The resident was bending the boy's neck up and down, checking for meningeal symptoms. My heart stopped. This wasn't meningitis-it was a cervical spinal cord injury, and any wrong movement could make the injury irreparable.

I shouted at the internal medicine resident, demanding to know why he hadn't taken the boy's history or consulted with us. He looked at me in shock, explaining that the screening doctor had told him the boy wasn't fully conscious and needed an emergency assessment. I cursed the stupidity of the situation-both the screen doctor and the resident-and immediately took charge. I rushed the boy back to our ward and called the neurosurgery resident to assess him.

Two days later, when I came back to the hospital, Mehdi greeted me with the news I had been dreading: the boy had died. His injury, a cervical spinal cord lesion at the C3-C4 level, had led to respiratory failure, and we couldn't save him. His innocent face, the way he had looked at me with hope, was seared into my memory. I couldn't shake the feeling that we had failed him-not just as doctors but as a system. A simple miscommunication, a failure to properly coordinate between departments, had led to this.

I was devastated. I had seen death before, more times than I could count. But this was different. This was the death of a child, and it wasn't just fate or bad luck-it was preventable. That reality hit me harder than anything else.

For days, I couldn't shake the depression. I was haunted by the memory of the boy's face and the knowledge that he might have lived if things had gone differently. But as much as it hurt, this was the reality of working in emergency medicine. Sometimes, no matter how hard we tried, we lost the battle. And it was always the innocent who paid the price.