Once this topic of medical histories has gone, here you catch.
My father had an uncle. A wonderful, deserved and kind person. Frontman, retired colonel, doctor of medical sciences, knight of numerous orders and laureate of many awards, author of more than a hundred scientific papers, a dozen inventions, and several monographs, etc, etc. Several operations have even been named by his name. A surgeon from B-ga, he worked for several decades at CITO and was rightly considered one of the best surgeons in the USSR. He shared this story in his time.
In 1945, our troops during the war with Japan moved through Mongolia. Well, and the field hospital where he served as the head of the department and the leading surgeon too (then he was a major). And here is a very ordinary day, he goes around with the assistants of the wounded, decides who the procedures, operations, medicines, etc. And he sees, a car enters the hospital, and it is accompanied by almost a squad of Mongolian automakers. They bring out some grandmother, and around her two columns in colonel ranks. In fact, a hospital for Soviet soldiers and officers, but since the medicine in Mongolia at the time was ahova (a type at the shaman level will give some grass to chew and a warm cumis to drink, and so go), sometimes local Mongolian chiefs appealed, and their families too.
He tells the assistant, go and find out what a difficult grandmother brought us, and I will be here with the seriously injured. After a few minutes, the assistant is resorting, the hair is torched. Comrade Major, this is not just a grandmother, they brought the sister of Marshal Choibalsan himself there. (For those who do not know, Choibalsan was the equivalent of Stalin in Mongolia. More details in Google. The uncle says to the assistant, you run to her, find out what and how, listen to her (like the first inspection), and I will now finish, change my clean coat and come. Meet me at the cabinet.
Meeted, the assistant has an eye for 50 kopecks. “Comrade Major, she has no heart.” "So, Comrade Lieutenant, don't fool my head, I can see how she chases colonels, but you don't know her at all, and it's not your job to make any silly conclusions about her character. She, by the way, is the sister of our most important ally here in the fight against the enemy." “No, Comrade Major, you didn’t understand me so, I listened to her, well, with a stethoscope, and she really has no heart.” “Yes, you drank, confess immediately. I wanted to have a hoodie.” “You love it, Comrade Major. No more ordinary. And listen to it yourself, the heart really doesn’t hear.” Maybe he has no pulse? A dead man is walking.” “No why. There is a pulse, but no heart.
Uncle meets her, colonels here. What to bring, bring? No need to translate. He is listening to her with a stethoscope, and really, there is almost no sound of the heart. It cannot be so. She starts applying a stethoscope to other places and turns out... her heart is on the right. The rarest case, but it happens. He recalls that from a decade ago to his first-time student an old teacher (he was 70 years old) told him that he encountered such during the conquest of Turkestan in the 1880s when he was a very young doctor.
Okay, and the sister of Choibalsan complains about what? The stomach says it hurts. to left. All symptoms and examination indicate the most banal appendicitis in a critical state. The pain is on the left. If the heart of a person is on the right, does this mean that all other organs are in the opposite position? In the institute such case studies do not take place (at least then). And here the mistake cannot be made, it is not the devil knows who, but the sister of Choibalsan himself. He thinks thinks, and decides - appendicitis and left. I will be operated urgently.
And here there is a difficulty, and in the very so-called unexpected place. Mongols do not traditionally wash. As Genghis Khan said, whoever washes, washes away happiness, that is how it is. It smells good, but it’s an operation. Everything should be sterile, or at least not so dirty. There is almost no dirt on it.
Uncle Colonel – wash it, translate it. They talk to her, and she hurts at them. He breaks with saliva, his hands swallow, he wants to scratch his mouths. As long as she is alive, she will live according to the laws of the steppe, and if they only try to wash her, their dead bodies will also be washed before burial. They have forgotten who they are and that they are no one at all. A scandal for the entire hospital. The hospital director ran away.
The uncle explains to the colonels and the head of the hospital that if she is not washed or brought to the operating table in a clean form, then the risk of infecting her is 100%. It is easier to just wait for peritonitis or as an act of mercy to end it now. In short, you don’t want to wash, so let it go as you want. But neither he nor his department will conduct the operation categorically. And let the colonels solve the grandmother’s problems themselves. The head of the hospital is in a semi-infractive condition. He knows that the uncle is right, but at the same time he understands that if, while they argue, the grandmother ends up, he loses the pursuit at least.
But the boss and the boss want to find compromises. He tells everyone to wait. He runs into all the backbone to the combridge and cries, "I need contact with Marshal Choibalsan urgently." "And with Zhukov or Vasilevsky you do not need a comrade doctor of communication." “We don’t need them, but Choibalsan is urgently needed, we need to wash his sister. And the conversation repeats, “Did you drink?” “Yes, no, no more than the usual” “You want to have a hauptwacht?“No, we just need to wash my grandmother” and explains to the combridge what and how. And she says that the grandmother is already sick, and while they argue here, she will move the horses soon. Combridge seizes what his pursuit is under question and calls the army headquarters.
And again, did you drink? Do you want to go to the hauptstadt?” “We don’t just have to wash our grandmother.” In the headquarters, they also hear that the chases are flying. They call even higher. Talk again. And a few more calls and similar conversations and finally Marshal Choibalsan himself knows. He calls the combridge and says, “Colonels here. I allow you my sister to wash, and give her an order from me to silence immediately. report on implementation.”
Everything was prosaic. Choibalsan’s sister was washed. Remove the dirt. She hasn’t washed since she was born. was operated. Indeed, appendicitis in a neglected form, a few more days and the end. It really was on the left. Everything went well.
Those who were awarded orders and medals. Uncle, too, although the award note is quite different.
Then he admitted that even if the operation was the most trivial, the excitement he could only compare with when many years later he operated Landau. But about that, a completely different story.