Chip French, KBR Medic in Iraq, OB Emergency!!?
by by Chip French

When you’re working for the Army in a war zone during an active insurgency, the last thing that you are ready for at 3 am is an OB call. Its 42 degrees outside with a stiff breeze and my partner Steve (the Black Cloud) and I are driving bleary eyed to the front gate of the base where a Local National (Iraqi) woman is in labor. The guards at the gate radioed the TMC (Troop Medical Clinic, the military medics for the base) and they refused to come out because it was not a case of life, limb, or eyesight which is the military standard for helping the locals. So who ya gonna call? You guessed it… those KBR medics. We get to the gate where there is a small plywood shack off to one side of the road for searching people who come on to the base. In it we find a 45 y/o female approx. 9 months along… GRAVITA 14!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Holy crap!!!!!!! My eye brows neatly parted my 3 am hair do after hearing that. She says the last few times she delivered about 1 hour after her water broke and that happened 45 min. ago. Ooookay… She is exceptionally calm and quiet for a woman in labor, but she explains that she has not had much pain during her last several deliveries. One of the guards happens to be a 91 whisky, military equivalent of an EMT- Basic. He tells us that she’s been having contractions about 10 min. apart and lasting 1 min. As we are getting the story, I can’t help but have flashbacks to “Gone With The Wind”… “I don’t know nuthin bout birthin no babies”… The two medics from the other KBR clinic on camp show up (they weren’t about to miss this) and fortunately we have a female medic Krista (Kritter) to do a cervix check. Hmm, what does that other A in APGAR stand for… Before Kritter can do the cervix check the woman says through the interpreter that she can’t have her baby in the shack because “the other women will talk about her and her baby”. Apparently it is not socially acceptable to have a baby anywhere but at home or in a hospital. It turns out that her husband (Super Stud) is the guy that owns the land that our base is built on and is closely related to the local Sheik who is the tribal Big Kahuna in the Nasiriyah area. Super Stud has elected to wait outside. It seems that they were hoping that we could take them to the Air Force hospital at Tallil Air Base about 10km up the road. Unfortunately we can’t make that happen… It’s a messed up situation, but it’s the situation we’ve got. In any case, she now says she must go out and talk to her husband. This is a delicate matter with many complicated issues with religious, social, and political ramifications. We really can’t refuse to let her get up and go. So out the door she goes. Now we’re discussing what we can use for cord clamps… looks like some 4/0 silk will have to do. How to intubate if we have to resuscitate… 4.5 is the smallest tube we carry. Why didn’t we put a bulb syringe in the airway bag… who would have thought this would happen? Hey! Where the h*ll is she going??? Out the window we see her walking into the porta potty!!!!! We run after her gritting our teeth waiting for the big splash that we know will come at any second… Kritter pounds on the door and the woman opens it. Right there, she lifts up her dishdasha, squats and urinates on the floor of the porta potty. Well, at least she wasn’t dangling the kid over the hole… APPEARANCE!!!!!!! That’s it! I can’t help it that I think of weird stuff at strange moments. Maybe it was the thought of pulling the kid out of the blue “liquid” in the porta potty that jarred my memory on that one. So, since she refuses to have the baby in the shack they decide try to make it to the hospital in Nasiriyah, about 20 minutes away. Our base interpreter, an Iraqi, has a car and will drive them to the hospital. (an incredibly brave thing to do for an Iraqi helping the Americans, especially at night). So after the 1 minute “How to Deliver a Baby in 3 Easy Steps” seminar they are off to the hospital. We spend a few minutes debriefing on how to be ready for this if it happens again. Then we crawl back into bed for another hour and a half before we have to get up and do it all again. As my eyes close, it comes over the radio from Operations (kind of our command center) that they made it to the hospital with no complications……….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz KBR Iraq: It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure. Lewis (Chip) French Paramedic LOGCAP III KBR Government Operations Camp Cedar II O&M Clinic An Nasiriyah, Iraq APO AE 09331 CAPROCK # (USA): 281-669-3136 Email: Lewis.French@halliburton.com