Posted 4/6/2011

CHINA BEACH SYNDROME

This is a warning to anyone who wants to send either military or CIA personnel to Libya, or any place else on earth where mass violence is occurring.

China Beach was a critically acclaimed television series which ran in the late 1980s. It vividly showed the effects of war on the medical personnel of the "510th Evac Hospital." It shows how emotionally affected – and ultimately damaged – doctors and nurses were by coming into intimate contact with the wounded and dead of the Vietnam War.

The nurses and doctors were so hurt by war that they had great difficulty returning to civilian life. One doctor became tense and emotionally overwrought – easily upset by even mild irritations. One medic who attended to those who died became so off-center that he identified with the dead bodies he handled. He treated each as a living friend and not as something to stuff into a body bag.

Even more vivid was the example of Lieutenant McMurphy – a trauma nurse played brilliantly by actress Dana Delaney. Although she seemed to be the most "normal" of the staff, her problems surfaced when she was granted leave to return home to Kansas.

Her mother was shocked to find that the returning McMurphy was no longer the quiet, dutiful Catholic girl who had left home to go to war. She smoked and spoke bluntly, shocking her uptight, religious, proper mother. Worse yet, she cared little for make-up and the latest Midwestern fashions. Three days into her return, McMurphy was moving about the house like a starving cat.

Finally, they agreed that McMurphy should go to the local hospital to see if she could get temporary work as a nurse. She did, and landed in the emergency room. But this became a disastrous experience for everyone – especially the doctors and nurses, who had little experience dealing with trauma.

Working on her first patient, McMurphy, who had operated on many of the wounded when there were too few doctors to handle them, interrupted the surgeon's initial surgical move. The nurses were shocked because, in Kansas, no nurse ever dared interrupt and correct a doctor.

The doctor – like all doctors – had an exalted opinion of his skills and status. He was both shocked and outraged that "a mere nurse" would interrupt and correct his performance. (For surgeons the world over, ego trumps "first, do no harm."). Oblivious to the instant hostility surrounding her, McMurphy pressured the doctor to alter his surgical approach. She was right, the patient survived – and everyone in the room hated her.

A few more experiences like this, and McMurphy was back home with mother.

Mother, upset by McMurphy's duffle bag of "dirty, stained and smelly clothes," had dumped everything into the trash can behind the house. When McMurphy discovered that her army clothes were missing, she raised hob (and several hobletts) with her mother. She then stormed out to the garbage can and pulled each and every army article out. Touchingly, she buried her face in some – as if trying to reconnect with her real home on China Beach.

She left home before her leave was up.

This episode vividly showed how powerful war is, deeply affecting the lives of its non-combat personnel. McMurphy was not afraid for her life. She was never wounded or hurt. There were no terrorists inside the camp. There were no roadside bombs. There was no incoming artillery. Yet she was changed forever in fewer than 24 months, and was made unfit for civilian life.

McMurphy was a fictitious character. But she was created out of a composite of non-combat medical personnel who experienced similar war damage.

The grunts of Vietnam suffered far more greatly than did the hospital medics. The casualties of war are not the statistics given by the military and media. The casualties of war are everyone who was ever fed a continuous diet of death and destruction.

There are two lessons to get from all this:

1. No one who goes to war comes back the same person who left.

2. No government should impetuously send men and women off to war.

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