Ventura Couple See Stoicism, Need on Visit to Afghanistan

By David Kelly

Dec. 30, 2002 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Carrying little more than an abiding passion for Afghanistan, Dr. Cedric Emery and his wife, Norma, flew into Kabul last month with a simple question: How can we help?

A few days later, Cedric was doing surgery and Norma, a nurse, was setting up a clinic in an orphanage for 850 children.

“I had absolutely no expectations,” said Emery, a Ventura urologist. “I thought we might be sitting around drinking tea for a month.”

The couple, who recently returned to Southern California from a two-week stay in Afghanistan, are no strangers to the battle-scarred Central Asian nation. They met there in 1967, when Norma was a Peace Corps volunteer and Cedric worked as a family physician with the U.S. Public Health Service. They returned to Afghanistan in 1972 and 1976, to visit and train surgeons.

But since the Sept. 11 terror attacks and subsequent war in Afghanistan, both have been itching to see what became of the Afghans, a people they grew to love for their kindness, toughness and hospitality.

“The country is awe-inspiring,” Norma said. “If you make an Afghan friend, you make a friend for life.”

After weighing the security risks, the couple decided this fall that the time was right. They flew to Dubai and then to Kabul aboard a jet owned by Ariana, the tiny national airline of Afghanistan.

Upon arrival, they checked into the Kabul Hotel and soon discovered that, aside from government ministers and heavily armed bodyguards, they were the only guests.

“We went in cold, on our own,” said Cedric Emery, 63. “Kabul was almost the same except for 2 million more people and lots of taxis from Pakistan.”

The next day, Norma traveled to an orphanage she had heard about. She brought hats, gloves and scarves that had been donated by friends in Ventura and Santa Paula. The staff appreciated the gifts but were puzzled by the 60-year-old nurse.

“They hemmed and hawed, not knowing what to do with me,” she recalled. “I told them I would clean windows, organize classrooms, wash hair, whatever they needed.”

She noticed the children suffered from poor hygiene, so she set up a tooth brushing and cleanliness program. Many children suffered from flu, skin rashes and untreated stomach ailments.

“They didn’t go to a hospital until they were dying,” she said.

Norma cleaned up a dirty, empty room in the orphanage. Then she and an Afghan pharmacist went to the bazaar and ordered 11 metal beds to be made along with pillows and mattresses.

They put in poles for IV bags and medicine cabinets, and painted the room. Soon they had a new clinic and found a doctor who would visit once a week.

“It looked fabulous,” she said, noting it was all done for about $1,000. “That room will be used for very sick children.” She also bought two pairs of shoes for the guards at the orphanage gate, who hadn’t been paid in seven months.

Across the city, Dr. Emery headed for Ali Abad Hospital, the only facility he knew of in Afghanistan with a urology wing. He met Dr. Hassan Manawi, the only English-speaking, foreign-trained physician at the hospital, who was teaching all the other doctors urology procedures.

Emery watched in awe and horror as complex surgery was done with primitive instruments that resembled something from the Civil War era. Clamps were corroded, sutures scarce and sterilizing solution tightly rationed. When doctors didn’t have gloves, they operated without them.

Patient charts weren’t the hefty tomes found in U.S. hospitals. They were often just a single page. But at least the hospital had anesthesia.

“The patients would walk into the operating room in their bare feet and take off all their clothes,” Emery said. “Then they would lie on the table. When the operation was over, the patient was taken out, the table was wiped down and the next patient was sent in.”

A day later, Emery was doing surgery with instruments he would have thrown out at home.

“I made do,” he said with a grin. “Just like the Afghans.”

Despite the primitive conditions and occasional post-operative infections, Emery said most surgeries were successful. The hospital’s seven urologists perform 1,200 operations each year. Emery was especially impressed with the stoic, grateful nature of the patients.

“I never heard one complaint,” he said. “It was refreshing.”

Family members brought the patients’ food. When blood was needed, a relative would sit in the operating room and donate blood, transfused straight into the person on the table. Pain medication was virtually unknown, but the Afghans showed an uncanny ability to tolerate discomfort.

“It’s wonderful in a way because the doctors make do and the patients do well,” Emery said. “You are appalled on one hand, but impressed on the other.”

Emery did a dozen surgeries at the hospital and taught at the medical school. Physicians told him horror stories of Taliban troops ransacking and vandalizing the hospitals, often out of sheer spite.

“They were like the brownshirts of Nazi Germany,” he said. “The Afghans love America for getting rid of these people.”

But while making do is admirable, Emery said many Afghans die because of a lack of basic medical tools.

Scalpels, sutures, retractors and clamps are in short supply. More important, the Afghans lack endoscopy equipment, which can look into the bladder, prostate and urethra to detect cancer and other major problems. Such tools can cost $100,000, and Emery has already sent letters to manufacturers, seeking donations of equipment.

He also has asked urology colleagues around the country for donations of basic surgical equipment. “If we can get the endoscopy equipment, then I will go back and show them how to use it,” he said.

Despite the hardships, Emery, a partner in a Ventura medical group, called the trip “wildly successful.”

“This was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “We learned a lot and grew a lot.”

His wife, a nurse at hospitals in Ventura and Santa Paula, is also eager to return. Aside from Afghanistan, she has traveled to Vietnam and China as part of Operation Smile, which does restorative surgery on children with cleft palates.

“I think the lesson in all of this is that one person can make a change,” she said. “If you are willing to reach out and look for opportunities.”