The Electronic Intifada 27 February 2025
Denied essential medicine and medical equipment, amputation has been the only option for doctors in Gaza to fight infections.
APA imagesMuhammad was my older brother.
He is the closest to my heart and I to his. That’s what we always used to say.
In July, my brother fell ill. For a month, he felt constantly tired. But he didn’t want to increase our father’s burden. Muhammad didn’t complain. He rested as much as possible in the hope that his condition would improve.
It didn’t. As the days passed, he got worse. He became unable to move and the pain was so severe that it would make him scream. Eventually, my father, who is a nurse, took him to the nearest hospital, Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, where he was diagnosed with kidney failure.
Doctors said he would need dialysis twice a week and a kidney transplant as soon as possible. The whole family rushed to volunteer, me at the front of the queue, but our mother insisted that she would donate her kidney.
In August, she duly did. Muhammad recovered well and was soon discharged.
A month later, on the evening of 10 September, there was a bombing in our area, al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, an area that Israel had told everyone was safe.
We were all asleep at the time of the attack, as we went to bed early with no electricity and therefore no light, no TV and little else to entertain us.
There was no warning. The sound of the explosion was terrifying. Fire erupted and it became chaotic. We screamed and ran from the tents with blood on our faces. Thankfully we only suffered minor injuries and burns.
Muhammad, however, did not move from his bed. My mother was the first to notice and ran to him screaming. She found a piece of metal shrapnel shaped like a knife sticking out of his leg. He was bleeding profusely. She tried to remove the shrapnel, but the fire was close and she had to give up.
Hospital horror
Ahmad, my younger brother, ran to get an ambulance. The crew got Muhammad out and rushed him to Nasser hospital where the shrapnel was removed and his leg was stitched up.
I visited my brother every day and I learned the details of the patients that were being treated in the same room with my brother. I checked on them during each visit.
I was shocked by what I saw in the orthopedic department.
Next to my brother’s bed was a boy, 12, with whom Ahmad, also 12, made friends. He had also suffered shrapnel wounds to his legs. Eventually, both his legs were amputated. He survived only a few more days after.
There was also an older man, perhaps in his 70s, with an amputated leg and multiple health problems. A few days after my first visit I lost him. When I asked my brother about him, he told me that he died due to an injury to his leg.
Hamed, a young man in his 20s who was friends with Muhammad, had his hands and feet amputated due to a bombing that targeted his house. A few days later he too died.
I cried whenever my brother told me that other patients in the department had died from their injuries. I feared what happened to them would happen to my brother.
I asked the doctor about the many amputees.
His answer terrified me. He said that due to the lack of medicine and equipment, doctors had little choice.
“In our department, there is no way to save the lives of the injured except through amputation,” he told me.
Gangrene
A month after he was injured, the doctors said Muhammad was suffering from blood poisoning and gangrene in his leg. They said they were going to have to amputate.
We had no real choice, but my brother resisted fiercely. “Don’t let them amputate my leg,” he begged our father. “Please don’t.”
A few hours later, he lost consciousness. The doctor told us that his condition would get worse and if his leg was not amputated immediately, he would not make it. My father agreed.
We all cried and I asked the doctor to let me enter the intensive care room next to my brother so that I could take a picture of him before his leg was amputated.
Muhammad survived the operation but did not regain consciousness right away. The doctor told us this was normal for the first 48 hours. That period soon passed. Then more days began to pass. Then weeks.
We moved our tent to an area near the hospital so that we could visit my brother daily. Before, it would take us two hours to walk – our only option since there was no fuel and no viable alternative means of transportation.
Every day I would go to the hospital and sit next to Muhammad. I’d talk to him and remind him of our memories together, hoping something would register.
Every day, my mother made him potato kibbeh in case he woke up hungry.
Every day, a family member would go to donate blood.
And then, one day, Muhammad returned to us with a smile. It was exactly one month after the amputation. My mother was next to him, holding back her tears so that he would not see them. His eyes began to blink with joy.
Three days
My mother let out a ululation in joy and called the doctors.
“Muhammad has woken up, Muhammad is healthy.”
The doctors came and everyone was overwhelmed with happiness and surprise that Muhammad had regained consciousness. We shared smiles. Muhammad smiled back.
Muhammad was unable to move at first. After some hours, my father helped him sit up. Only then did he realize that he had lost one leg. He cried. Everyone tried to console him.
My mother finally saw her son eat the kibbeh, which she mashed to make it easier for him to swallow.
On 2 December 2024, three days after he regained consciousness, my beloved brother died.
He was 24.
I had already started counting the days for his recovery.
He underwent dialysis treatment for a month and then, after the kidney transplant, needed another month to recover. It took a month for the treatment of his leg before he fell into a coma which also lasted a month. Based on this, I calculated that it would take him another month to recover from the amputation.
Why did he only survive three days after he woke up?
Muhammad was my older brother.
He is the closest to my heart and I to his.
That’s what we always used to say.
Names have been withheld out of consideration for the family.
