(Translated post from Dr. Soe Min’s FACEBOOK on 15 March 2021)
I tried to call, failed miserably of course, the phone-numbers of medical facilities in the area. So I went direct to the Hlaing Tharyar Hospital and asked if I could help, of course after introducing myself as a surgeon, and they sent me direct to the emergency surgery.
There was one wounded patient inside and another one waiting just outside the surgery to enter, and I didn’t even know how many wounded were waiting downstairs. Right away I started operating on the one already inside. Then another one. One after another.
At just after 7 pm I finished fixing a wounded patient with large open wound on belly and mutilated insides. I could still hear the gunshots from right outside the hospital.
When I went back down to Emergency, the world is ending there. Since the army had just withdrawn temporarily for the night the Ambulances (hiding with their wounded patients) were coming into the hospital one after another. Volunteer paramedics were rapidly carrying patients one after another into emergency room. Some were alive and still breathing but dying, and some were already dead on arrival.
The one who got shot on the head with his brain partly exposed suddenly sat up and tried to run away but dropped out of the bed and fell unconscious. Every doctor and nurse is intensively trying to save whichever patient they were attending. So busy nobody could help other as one was giving oxygen while other one was searching locating the vein and some were holding down the struggling patient.
Beside one severely wounded patient his mother was screaming at him, “Hang on my son, mother is right here.” His one friend comforted, “Think of your little boy, don’t give up.” And the dying patient cried, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.”
Red blood was bubbling out off the gunshot wound on right side of his chest. I knew then that I could put a Chest-Tube into his chest cavity and save him, but that stuff was kept only in the Surgery not here in the Emergency. Not in my hands. He already had a shock. I couldn’t even find an IV line. Also suitable blood had to be found. Seemed like a long time but it lasted only less than a minute. He died right there right under my eyes.
Last week one patient like him was timely saved, for we immediately took him into the theater and put a Chest Tube even without taking an x-ray. At RGH Emergency, in cases like that, we put Chest Tubes while patients were still on the trolley. Now I had nothing in my hands. The patient did have no time and died. I was left with full of regrets.
Wounded were still coming in. The whole evening I could finish operating only one patient. If I kept on operating I wouldn’t be able to go home (because of the night curfew). The worse was I myself didn’t feel like operating no more. I was done.
They were shooting anyone moving about and we were not so sure they wouldn’t be shooting at us doctors and nurses for saving lives they were eagerly trying to snuff out. We couldn’t even guarantee that they wouldn’t enter the hospital and arrest us for saving lives.
Just recently they had brutally beaten a doctor to death with their rifle-butts after blaming us doctors for encouraging the protesters by treating them when they were wounded by the cops and soldiers. Even UN has the video evidence of that killing.
So one could laugh at us that we didn’t dare to do our job because we were afraid of being arrested and also scared of getting shot inside the hospitals. No, not afraid of being arrested or not afraid of getting killed. Just couldn’t accept no more the brutal fact that our unarmed people were bullied and killed by bastard armed soldiers.
Just yesterday alone they slaughtered more than 100 innocent people (in Hlaing Tharyar Township alone). The most I could save yesterday was just 5 lives. My eventual thinking was that to save more we have to eliminate the killers. If I wanted to save more lives I had to drop the surgical knife in my hands and pick up a gun.
The Great United Nations hasn't finished worrying about us yet. The Great Americans can't get enough of their grand statements yet. The war dogs were laughing at us the hapless people and at the same time ridiculing us, “Don’t look out for UN and US, they will never come.” And the bastards are killing more and more of us day by day.
From now on I knew clearly who our enemies are. Anyone working with/for the War Council and trying to illegally rule our country are our enemies. I don't even want to face them in this life and also in the next lives of my Sansara. I want to look straight into their faces and spit at them, “HTWEEH.”
Video by killer-cops of battle-hardened 7th Police-Combat-Battalion airlifted from
