IN THE NAME OF A MAN

Interview with senior surgeon of the Central Clinical Military Hospital, m/s Lieutenant Colonel Vahan Gevorgyan

-I am brought up in a Goris spirit. Goris is a very beautiful town. Its architect was a woman, and here you can feel feminine subtlety and harmony. Goris inhabitants are as powerful as their mountains, sensitive, like nature, they are intellectuals. Let’s recall Sero Khanzadian, Constantine Orbelian. Only Shinuhayr village (the birthplace of my mother) gave four academicians… Goris men love their women and women of Goris are the personification of devotion.

When I was a child I decided to become a surgeon, because the doctor who treated me just struck me with his kindness, behavior, care. Doctor is patient’s guardian. The doctor wants to defeat the disease, all his life is a fighting for the patient. Sometimes journalists ask me: how do you, a 23-24-year-old man, went to the front? I just can not imagine how a doctor could not go to where there are sick, the more – the wounded? The more difficulties add, the more my decision to stay at the front became firm. Sometimes, I operated on two tables, as I could not waste time. Within a few hours my hair turned gray. Never believe if somebody says that the doctor did not fight for the life of the patient, do not believe!

You know, the doctor – it is a kind of human species. If you are not born doctor, you can not become one. Once head of the surgical department Sergey Ivanovich said to me: many like surgery, but the main thing for the surgeon is that surgery loves him. In your case it loves you. And now the same thing I want to say about the young chief of the surgical department of our hospital Sevak Shahbazian – surgery loves him.

– Your most important statement of the Artsakh war.

– It is necessary to avoid a war.

– And what you are unhappy with?

– Nothing, I’m satisfied. So what if I have no garden or garage?

– And what do you have?

– Homeland… Friends… Family…

Interview by Gayaneh Poghosyan