My childhood dream was to pursue a medical degree. To assist people, I aspired to become a doctor. Never did I ever imagine studying medicine in a hospital instead of a university, or from textbooks, but from real-world experience.
I made the decision to enroll in al-Azhar University’s medical school after finishing my BA in English last year. I left school at the end of June. We, medical students, are forced to watch lectures on our mobile phones and read medical books while using the flashlights on our mobile phones because all of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed.
The lectures from older medical students, who the genocidal war has prematurely forced into practice, are a part of our training.
At Deir el-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, a fifth-year medical student named Dr. Khaled gave my first lecture of this kind.
Al-Aqsa doesn’t appear to be a typical hospital. The patients don’t have privacy or room for privacy. Patients groan throughout the entire building while lying on beds or the floor in the corridor.
We are unable to deliver our lectures in the hospital yard due to the overcrowding.
Dr. Khaled began, “but from days when medicine was something you had to invent,” “I’ll teach you what I learned not from lectures.”
He began by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), opening the airway, and checking breathing. The lesson, however, quickly changed to how to save a life from nothing, which is not a typical course of instruction.
A young man pulled from beneath the rubble, legs shattered, and head bleeding, was a recent case, according to Dr. Khaled. Before moving the patient, the standard protocol calls for stabilizing the neck with a stabiliser.
However, there was no stabiliser. No splint . Nothing, no.
Dr. Khaled then sat on the ground, cradled the man’s head between his knees, and held it motionless until the equipment arrived, which was what no medical textbook would do.
He continued, “I wasn’t a student that day.” The brace was me. I served as the tool.
Dr. Khaled continued to walk as the supervising doctor prepared the operating room because it was all he could do to stop further injury.
Dr. Khaled’s about improvised medical solutions was one of the stories that came to mind.
One of the conversations was particularly upsetting.
A woman with a severe pelvic injury entered the hospital in her early 30s. Her flesh was torn. She required immediate surgery. However, sterilization of the wound was required first.
Betadine was absent. alcohol is not consumed. No up-to-date tools. only chlorine .
Chlorine, yes. the same substance that causes eye sting and burns the skin.
She had no consciousness. There was no other choice. The chlorine was poured in by them.
Dr. Khaled yelled at us with a resounding remorse as he told us this tale.
He said, “We used chlorine,” but he didn’t look at us. Not because we were unsure of our situation. but because there was nothing else.
What we heard shocked us, but perhaps not so much. Many of us were aware of the desperate actions doctors in Gaza had to take. Many of us had seen the heartbreaking video of Dr. Hani Bseiso attempting to save his niece from a table.
Dr. Hani, an orthopaedic surgeon from al-Shifa Medical Complex, was in an impossible situation last year when his niece, Ahed, was seriously hurt in an Israeli airstrike. Because the Israeli army had besieged the area, they were stranded in their apartment complex in Gaza City and unable to move.
Ahed was bleeding and her leg had become so severe that it needed to be repaired. Dr. Hani had few options.
No anesthesia was present. no tools for surgery. A plastic bag, a pot of water, and a kitchen knife are all you need.
Ahed sat down at the table with her face pale and half-closed, while her uncle, who was filled with tears, prepared to amputate her leg. Video was used to capture the situation.
He pleaded, “Look,” and his voice sounded hollow, “I am amputating her leg without anesthesia!” The mercy is absent. “Humanity is where? “
His surgical training collided with the moment’s raw horror as he worked quickly, hands trembling but precise.
Even young children who have been amputated without anesthesia have been subjected to this scene numerous times throughout Gaza. And as medical students, we are becoming aware that this might be true, that we may have to operate on a relative or a child as a result of their unbearable suffering.
The hardest lesson we are learning, however, is when we don’t treat wounds because those who still have a chance of survival need to be helped. This discussion is theoretically ethical in other countries. We need to learn how to make this choice because we might soon have to do it ourselves.
Dr. Khaled once said, “In medical school, you are taught to save everyone. You are taught that you can’t live with that in Gaza.
To carry the inhumane weight of knowing you can’t save everyone and to continue, to develop a superhuman level of emotional endurance to deal with loss after loss without breaking and losing one’s own humanity is what it means to be a doctor in Gaza today.
Even when they are exhausted and starving, these people still teach and treat them.
Our instructor, Dr. Ahmad, stopped midway through a trauma lecture, leant onto the table, and sat down. He yelled, “I just need a minute.” My blood sugar is low.
He hadn’t eaten since the previous day, we all knew. The war is consuming the very bodies and minds of those who attempt to treat others, not just the plight of medicine. And we, the students, are actually gaining real knowledge that medicine in this place is more than just a matter of knowledge and skills. It’s about surviving long enough to use them.
Being a doctor in Gaza means constantly reviving traditional medicine, using only natural resources, using only modern technology, and bandaging with your own body.
Not just a resource crisis, either. It’s a moral test.
And in that test, the wounds penetrate deeply: through hope, dignity, and flesh.
