Sick in Iran. My hospital stay in Bam, Iran

April/May 1975

I worked in Iran as an electrical technician for an American film production company on an American-Iranian film production. The filming locations were in the southeastern desert of Iran, near the Pakistani border. But our base camp was set up in the next largest city, Bam, because it had some infrastructure. This infrastructure included a small hospital whose services I was soon to use when I became sick in Iran.

During our shooting days at the remote locations in the desert, a walnut-sized lump developed on my butt, causing me increasing pain. Every time I washed after going to the bathroom (there was no toilet paper, only water to clean up), I was in a hell of a lot of pain. At that time, I had to go to the toilet quite often because I was sick with dysentery. I ignored it for as long as possible, but the pain worsened every day. Finally, I went to the small hospital in Bam. The city of Bam was not very large, but it was the largest for hundreds of miles around, so this small hospital had to provide medical care to a large area. Some of the crew members had also been there for various ailments, so now it was my turn. The doctor who examined me in the hospital told me that I had a large abscess that needed to be cut open immediately and that I would have to stay in the hospital for a week. So I returned to the Hotel Aria, which we used as a kind of base camp when we came back from our desert trips, and from there, I told the production company that I needed to be operated on immediately and would be out for a week. Then I packed a few things and returned to the hospital.

Day 1

I was placed in one of three wards along with three other men, one of whom had acute appendicitis. There was also a spare bed for emergencies. A nurse who spoke a little English handled the admission formalities with me.

This was the first time I had to stay in a hospital, apart from when I was a child and had my tonsils removed. I had no idea what to expect. I was already a little uneasy because it was more than just disturbing how dingy and unhygienic it looked in this hospital. Faced with this situation, I desperately wanted to smoke a cigarette for reassurance. When I gestured to the head nurse to ask if I could smoke, she brusquely denied it. No way! Only after the doctor had gone home for dinner did she finally relent. I slid open the drawer next to my bed where I kept my ashtray, matches, and cigarettes, took a pack of Winston's from the rack I had bought on the way back to the hospital, and lit it with relish. I hoped that the appendix sufferer in the next bed would not be too bothered by the smoke. More consideration was not possible at that moment.

View from my hospital window.

My view from the hospital bed

Subsequently, I had the opportunity to gain first-hand insight into the everyday life of an Iranian hospital. I had to learn that preserving privacy and hygiene standards in an Iranian hospital of the year 1975 was given only limited attention. The beds were not surrounded by curtains as in England, and therefore I could watch fascinated how the nurse shaved off the pubic hair of the appendix man in the next bed. And passers-by on the main street of Bam, strolling past the large window of our hospital room, also had a good view of the procedure. After the nurse had shaved the bedside neighbour, she walked over to my bed and grinned. Now it was my turn with the razor! She used the same water and razor blade for this and spun me back and forth until she was done. I looked like a newborn baby.

That must have been the first time my bedmates and people passing by the window got to see a white willy and a white butt. My roommates, just like me before, were fascinated by this delicate and intimate process in public. Judging by their smiles, she must have done a good job. But, unfortunately, we couldn't talk about it because the language was a big problem. The middle-aged men on either side of my bed didn't speak a word of English, and I didn't speak a word of Farsi.

So the first steps towards the operation were made, but then the nurse came again and wanted to take blood. She first tried in vain on the right arm. Finally, she succeeded with the left arm. Relieved and assuming that now the worst was over, I leaned back and waited for the things that would come.

Time passes slowly in the hospital. I spent a few hours reading a book and then dozed until my colleagues came to visit. Their company was a welcome change; they brought me oranges, walnuts and other nuts. Just as I started to eat them, the nurse rushed in and took them from me. Why I could not understand. Fortunately, she hadn't caught anything from the carton of cigarettes Greg Sr. had brought me. They joined the other 200 cigarettes in my nightstand drawer. I was a heavy smoker in those days.

No sooner had my colleagues left than the same nurse who had shaved me arrived with a pitcher of water and an old can with a short piece of rubber tubing attached to the bottom. She signalled me to turn around. I tried in vain to look over my shoulder to see what she was up to. And there it was, the pain caused by the insertion of the tube into my bum. I groaned. But when she poured a warm liquid into the can, I cried out loudly. The pain hit me just behind the eyes, and the warm liquid triggered an immediate movement of my bowels. My reflex to sprint to the bathroom was not entirely successful. Afterwards, I crawled back into my bed, but only after changing my pyjama bottoms because I didn't reach the toilet in time. When you are sick with dysentery, get an enema and have a painful lump in the affected area, the condition of a toilet is an important issue because you often spend a certain amount of time there. A visit to the toilet in Iran, as in many other countries and areas that do not have a water closet, was then (and in many places still today) for us unaccustomed Westerners a messy affair. One squats over a hole and washes with water from a small plastic container. No toilet paper and, of course, no towels to dry yourself! You just pull up your pants, and the heat of the day does the rest. So, of course, were the toilets in the hospital in Bam.

I was now hungry and thirsty, but the nurse told me I couldn't eat or drink anything until after the surgery. Aha, that's why they had taken away my oranges and nuts. However, they put me on a glucose drip intravenously.

Again, the nurse had difficulty getting the syringe into my left arm. She tried the other arm as well, without success. She tried again on my left arm, aiming at different depths, angles and locations. A second nurse came in and immediately recognized the problem. I should have made a fist so they could find the right vein. Once we agreed on that, the needle was in my arm within no time. But now I should have loosened my fist again, which I had not understood. Since I had been ordered to clench my fist, I clenched it and clenched it until the nurses urgently gestured to me to loosen my fist. After I relaxed, there were no more problems, except for a sore arm with several puncture marks. The nurses giggled and thought it was all very funny. I wish I could have shared their humour. After four hours, the drip was removed, although the glucose container was still one-third full.

Day 2

I finally fell asleep around 1:00. At 5:30, a grinning male nurse woke me to make my bed. This must be common all over the world, with patients being awakened from a deep sleep at the crack of dawn. After he made the bed, I climbed back in, and five minutes later, I ran to the bathroom with diarrhoea running down my legs. Afterwards, I felt very hungry and thirsty and was really looking forward to surgery so I could at least eat and drink again. At least I could smoke.

An hour before the surgery, I got another injection. Half an hour later, thirty minutes before my surgery, I got a shock. I was told that I had to pay 3000 Rials / 45 USD for the operation and the hospital stay before going to the operating room. I had been assured by the production company that I only had to sign for these costs. They would then cover any costs. Since no one from the production company was around, I searched my wallet. Fortunately, I had enough money with me. But I didn't even want to think about what would have happened if my wallet had been empty.

The nurse then picked me up and took me to the operating room. Since there was no wheelchair, I had to walk. Four nurses and the surgeon watched me as I undressed, trying to cover my intimate body parts as best I could since there were no surgical gowns. I climbed onto what looked like a maternity trolley and lay on my back. My legs were splayed and rested on leg rests. In a pose like that, you quickly lose your inhibitions, especially with a spotlight shining in your butt and five pairs of eyes less than a foot away! They got into position, gave me an injection, and asked me to count backwards from 10. 10-9-8-7- then it went black. The next thing I remember was a feeling of uncontrolled reflexes. I felt as if I had been given LSD and was on a mind-blowing trip. I saw brightly coloured moving lights and had surreal experiences that happened at great speed, like setting a VCR to fast forward. All in all, I must have been anaesthetized for about an hour. When they stuck the needle in my arm, it was 10 o'clock on the clock in the OR. I checked the time on what appeared to be an oversized watch on my wrist immediately after I woke up, the hands of which were also oversized, and that wristwatch read 11 o'clock.

I was taken back to my bed and immediately fell into a deep sleep. I was extremely hungry and thirsty when I regained my senses properly at tea time, although I had been waking up at irregular intervals throughout the afternoon. I rose from bed expecting the usual pain and was pleasantly surprised to find it gone. Perhaps the medication was still effective, I surmised. But I wouldn't know until the pain returned with time.

After a slow shuffle around my bed on legs made of jelly, I quickly got back into my bed. Shortly after, I got my first meal, a little soup. It wasn't enough for my hunger, but I was still very grateful. My colleagues came with more nuts, oranges and cigarettes. They stayed for an hour, and we told each other about the day's events and the latest gossip. After they left, I fell into another deep sleep.

Day 3

The nurse woke me again at 5:30 a.m. to change the bedding. Breakfast followed shortly after. I had tea, milk and yoghurt. I felt much better and assumed that all pain was gone and I would continue to be pain-free. Far from it!

Having lanced and drained the abscess the day before, the surgeon had stuffed a bandage, shaped like a rat's tail about six inches long, into the cavity to soak up the blood and pus. An hour after breakfast, the nurse came in with a long pair of tweezers and a new bandage. I took off my pyjama pants and lay on my side.

This was the first time in my life that I broke out in a sweat within seconds, namely when the nurse pushed the tweezers into the wound and slowly pulled out the pus-filled and bloody old bandage. After that, I had to go to the shower room and sit for 15 minutes on the floor in an enamel bowl filled with warm salt water.

The shower room was old, and the fixtures were rusty as the shower had not worked in years. As I turned on the light, a large cockroach scurried across the floor. I killed it with my shoe. The water sloshed over the edge of the enamel bowl as I sat in it and flowed into a hole in the floor. Seconds later, I heard a strange noise coming from the hole. Moments later, three large cockroaches came out and scurried around my feet. I called out for the nurse. She opened the door, squeaked, and disappeared. Seconds later, however, she returned with a large can of cockroach spray, thrust it into my hand, and ran off. You wouldn't believe how fast cockroaches can run when you spray them with killer spray! I couldn't find a towel to dry off after the sit bath, so I went back to bed with soaked pyjama pants. Removing the old bandage was painful enough, but putting on the new one was just unbearable. As long as I was in the hospital, this was to be done daily.

I spent the rest of the day trying to talk to the other patients and walking outside on the hospital grounds. I finished reading my book and made notes in my diary until visiting hours began. I had a long talk with my colleagues, and after they left, I continued writing in my diary while drinking a glass of vodka from the bottle my caring colleagues had secretly brought. The highlight of the evening was when an emergency patient was brought in. A man was carried in, and he and the friends who carried him were covered in blood. Who knows what had happened to him!

The surgeon at the hospital was a jolly fellow who would chat with anyone and everyone. At one point, I watched him pour liquid into several jars of dead snakes and scorpions. In retrospect, I wish I had asked him what the jars were for. Later that evening, he showed the nurse the result of the appendectomy he had performed earlier (the appendix of the man in the next bed). It looked like a piece of uncooked cartilage. After that, he tossed it back into the bucket containing his surgery day's waste. Then he took the bucket outside and emptied the contents into the open drain at the side of the road. As soon as he turned around, a pack of dogs came running, snapping, growling and fighting over the tasty morsels. Not very hygienic, but everyone has to survive as best they can - including these dogs.

After five days, I had to go back to work, although I had not fully recovered, and that was another problem.

(DL)