A Life Saved (William B. Greenough, III, M.D.)

On a Saturday afternoon in July 1978 I suddenly came down with crampy abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting while tending to patients in the cholera hospital in the old Institute of Public Health accommodations. David Sack quickly recognized that I had small bowel obstruction, put down an NG tube and started IV hydration. He and Dr. KMS Aziz then sought surgical help around Dhaka. None was available over the Saturday/Sunday period.  David remembered our prior assistance to the Malumghat Hospital which was located between Chittagong and Cox’s Bazaarin a remote area of Bangladesh. The surgeons there were contacted and agreed to help. The question then was how to get me there quickly. Dr. KMS Aziz was able to arrange through friends in the Bangladesh Air Force a Russian helicopter and crew to airlift me from Dhaka to Malumghat Hospital Sunday morning.
 
On a stormy monsoon day, David, Aziz, my wife, and I boarded the helicopter at the old Tejgoan Airport and lifted off for Malumghat. I, with IV running and David tending it was probably the least worried about the flight conditions as I knew I needed surgery ASAP. On the first attempt the helicopter was forced back to Dhaka by a line of thunderstorms, but later on the second attempt Sunday afternoon made it to the coast.
 
Being a large helicopter, when it landed near the hospital it stopped the Sunday afternoon softball game by the staff and lifted the thatched roofs off several kutcha shacks. It was a tight squeeze and the pilots were superb.
 
I was rushed to the Malumghat OR, anesthetized, and opened up. My small bowel was kinked around some congenital bands that had been with me all my life but waited for me to be in Dhaka before creating a problem. The surgery went smoothly by a visiting surgeon from Cleveland Clinic. I recuperated in my anesthetists’ home, Dr. Richard Stagg, and after being relieved of my tubes I returned to Dhaka the following Sunday to return to work soon after.
 
Clearly David and KMS Aziz not only saved my life for which I am eternally grateful, but also experienced quite an adventure. The Malumghat Hospital which CRL had assisted during a cholera outbreak was one of the earliest users of ORT in the world. Serendipitously the Malumghat Hospital was founded because the daughter of an earlier missionary’s family had died of small bowel obstruction due to lack of surgical facilities. Her death energized the supporting churches to raise sufficient funds for an excellent surgical facility which could treat the local populations’ surgical problems as well as an occasional foreigner such as myself.
 
William B. Greenough, III, M.D.