Surgeon in Iraq finds ‘opportunity for me to give back’

Gary Vercruysse, a 38-year-old trauma surgeon at Grady Memorial Hospital, has handled some of the most devastating injuries in metro Atlanta.

But since September, the reservist has served as a surgeon at the Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad, Iraq — going from one kind of trauma center to another.

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Courtesy Dr. Gary Vercruysse

Maj. Gary Vercruysse with a 4-year-old Iraqi boy who was admitted three weeks earlier after over half his body was burned in a kerosene fire.

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Courtesy Dr. Gary Vercruysse

Maj. Gary Vercruysse (right) and Col. John Rowe are shown on a trip to Medical City Teaching Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq.

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Vercruysse, who does some surgeries himself and is in charge of about 15 other doctors, has had to adjust to the intensity of wartime injuries, the number of innocent victims and living in stark desert conditions.

The Decatur husband and father of two won’t be home in time for Christmas, but he’s looking forward to a January return.

We spoke to him recently about his experience.

Q: How is trauma surgery in Iraq different than what you do at Grady?

A: It’s different in a lot of ways. I’m in the hospital 18 or more hours a day. There are no days off. I live in a 10-by-10 trailer with a bed and a little side dresser.

The severity of injuries is astounding. Most of the injuries are from IEDs (improvised explosive devices) — car bombs or suicide bombers that blow people up. Almost everybody gets an operation because of the shrapnel. They have devastating limb injuries.

Q: Who are among the injured?

A: These days most of the injured are Iraqis: Iraqi police, army, special forces and a lot of civilians and children. We (the American soldiers) have body armor and they don’t. We have big armored vehicles.

Q: Grady has been criticized for its antiquated equipment. How does the equipment in the military hospital compare to Grady’s?

A: Without saying anything bad about Grady, I can say the equipment here is very modern. We have access to a nearly unlimited amount of blood. We have the newest and greatest CT scanners in the world. We have almost unlimited resources. This is a brand new hospital, less than a year old. It has a shell over it to protect it from mortar rounds.

Q: How often do you hear explosions?

A: At least a couple of times a week. [When you’re in the hospital] you feel it more than hear it. This is not a conventional war, so there’s no front. At times, you can hear mortar and gunfire right outside the base.

Q: You signed up as a reservist in March wanting to do this work. Why?

A: I felt like I’d been trained to do this job — a trauma surgeon. It was an opportunity for me to give back. And I had heard that there was a desperate need for trauma surgeons. I couldn’t do it without the help of those that I work with at Grady and Emory.

Q: How has this work advanced your training?

A: We see multiple patients in rapid succession. At Grady, we’d see two or three at one time. Here we see up to 30 or more. You have to decide who needs the OR (operating room) right now.

Q: Could you talk about the patients? The military hospital is essentially the trauma center for that area.

A: Many of the patients have done nothing to deserve their injuries. A dad and his kids were walking home from the market and a bomb goes off. Two of the three died and a 7-year-old lost his leg and eye.

[Recently] three kids were playing soccer in a field and one kicked a coffee can. It exploded and took off one of the kid’s legs. Another sustained a bad head and eye injury. The other had shrapnel injuries to his lower extremities. It was two brothers and another child. That happens every day. There’s always innocent people.

Q: How does it all affect you emotionally?

A: Why should there be a bomb in a soccer field? It’s terrible. None of us speak Arabic. The parents [of the injured children] aren’t there. For the kids, it’s a very scary situation.

Q: How do you spend your free time?

A: There’s not a lot to do here. It’s dusty when it’s not raining, and caked in mud when it is. I call my family twice a week. (He has a wife, Catherine; a 10-year-old daughter, Claire; and an 8-year-old son, Alec.)

Q: Has this experience affected your politics?

A: I didn’t come here because I was a fervent Bush supporter. Despite what people think and whether they disagree with the war, the soldiers here are trying to do the best job they can. And we treat the Iraqi patients — even the detainees — exactly as we do the Americans.

The sickest person goes to the operating room first. We’re the trauma hospital for this area.

We handle injuries to life, limb or eyesight. We had a woman who was one of many wives of a man. And another wife became jealous and threw kerosene on her and lit her on fire.