During the recent war in the south, I have been asked by a number of publications, both medical and other to write a blog. 

Dr. Mark Clarfield in a bomb shelter

However, it’s hard to blog when:

1) You have to run for cover every time an air raid siren goes off.

2) A rocket lands just a few score meters from where you are writing this blog. You  take up the recommended defensive position, hear and feel the blast, pick your self off the floor  and go back to work, albeit a bit shaky. You try not to imagine what it would have been like had they hit the hospital You don’t even try to imagine what it would have been like if they had hit you. They are trying.

3) You have to move all your frail elderly patients from one ward (which could not withstand a direct rocket attack) to another  (which might be able to).
 
4) Your office has closed because the building is not protected. You have to borrow other peoples’ desks and computers.

5) You have to convince family members to take their sick elderly relatives home because the hospital cannot guarantee their safety.

6) Your fellow doctors and nurses are called up to serve in the reserves. The emergency room is full of wounded soldiers.

7) You have to try to reassure your wife and kids (one of whom is a soldier) that you are OK — even when you are obviously not .They are not stupid.

8)You are worried about your friends, your family, your family’s friends and your friends’ families.

9) You are heartsick over the situation of the citizens of Gaza who have no one to protect them, who are huddled in the cold and dark, shivering, hungry and frightened. You wonder whether they understand that there ‘democratically elected’ Hamas government, which instead of digging bomb shelters for them dug an underground city of tunnels full of explosives and booby traps.

10) You are sick at heart for the children of Israeli towns bordering Gaza such as Sderot who have spent 8 years living through this hell from the sky – and wonder how they do it – since you are still a novice at this, having lived through only one week of rocket fire.

And that is why it’s hard to blog.

From Dr A. Mark Clarfield, Toronto born and bred. He is currently Chief of Geriatrics at the Soroka Hospital and Professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Ben-Gurion University, Beer-sheva, southern Israel.