Fabulous Female Physicians by Sharon Kirsh & Florence Kirsh

Author:Sharon Kirsh & Florence Kirsh [Kirsh Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JNF007000
Publisher: Second Story Press
Published: 2001-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

Lucille and Piero, many years after they were married.

Lucille and Piero began to raise money in Italy and Canada so they could add to the hospital. Soon there was a women’s ward, a men’s ward, a children’s ward, an x-ray department, a special section for people with malnutrition, an isolation section for those with contagious diseases and an operating room. Lucille was the surgeon and doctor for outpatients over age six. She also taught the Italian doctors who came for training. Piero was the pediatrician, radiologist, anesthesiologist (the doctor who keeps patients from feeling pain during surgery by using certain drugs) and medical director. Every morning they were up at seven o’clock. Lucille had her coffee and toast (with Quebec maple syrup) while listening to the news from Britain on her radio. Then she put on her white lab coat and walked down the hill to the hospital.

On a Saturday night in 1962, their only child, Dominique, was born. The next day Lucille rested. On Monday, she performed surgery. She had seen that the Acoli women went back to work within hours of giving birth, and she wanted to be as strong as her African friends and patients.

Sometimes Dominique felt ignored by her busy parents, but she played with her friends in the hospital compound. When Dominique was almost ten years old, Lucille and Piero made a painful decision — they would send their beloved daughter to live in Italy with Piero’s relatives.

Dominique was angry and hurt, but she understood that it would be dangerous to remain in Gulu. A young military officer named Idi Amin Dada had become dictator of Uganda in 1971. Under his dictatorship tribal wars began. The Nilotic people of the north, supported by Amin, were killing the Bantu people of the south, who were supported by the British. Amin encouraged the Nilotics to completely wipe out Bantu groups such as the Acoli. Lucille and Piero feared that Amin’s soldiers would come to Gulu. Dominique had to be protected, but they themselves needed to stay at the hospital.

Three years later Dominique left Italy to attend a boarding school in Kenya, an African country near Uganda. A group of nuns from Montreal paid her tuition, because her parents had little money. During her school vacations Dominique came home to Gulu. Sometimes she and her father went on safari.

In 1979, civil war began in Uganda. Amin’s troops were defeated by an army from nearby Tanzania, but hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed. Many soldiers loyal to Dictator Amin retreated to Gulu. Every night these soldiers — some of whom were very young — would rob and kill. One night, twelve cars filled with Amin’s supporters broke into the hospital compound, firing their automatic weapons and looting the buildings. They beat up Piero, threatening to shoot him, but instead they disappeared with the hospital’s vehicles.

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