La Vida de Nos: Why is Dr. Akbar Fuenmayor returning?

Two floors above the mezzanine is the Doctor Fernando Gabaldón Intensive Care Unit (ICU). It is a semicircle that leads to three rooms: one in which they serve adults, another in which they receive children, and the third serves as a waiting room for the relatives of those admitted. There they are revealed on cardboard sheets that they spread on the floor. Days and nights pass waiting for someone to appear to give him reason from their loved ones or instructions about some medication, some supplies that they should look for.

The latter often happens, because there are not many essential things here. No infusion pumps, no fans, no monitors, no portable

This is the kingdom of Dr. Akbar Fuenmayor. He walks around with his pockets full of lollipops to give them to the children who come to his office. He not only treats patients but also teaches classes and advises the theses of some of his students.

Here, every morning, for 33 years.

Nothing has been able to tear him from this place.

Why come back?

This was the second intensive care unit inaugurated in Venezuela. It saw the light during the first presidency of Rafael Caldera. In its beginnings, 50 years ago, it could care for 30 patients daily, including children and adults, and was a regional reference. He received referred cases from different parts of the Andean region. When Dr. Akbar arrived at the hospital, 33 years ago, it had 8 spaces, 75 nurses in the ICU and intensivists who came from the United States, Mexico and Spain.

Little remains of that time. Many have left here. Now there are only about 35 nurses and 7 intensivists: one of them is Dr. Akbar.

He wears a plaid shirt under his white coat, black pants and shoes. He just received the guard. He caught up with the nurses regarding critical cases. He walks with his hands in his pockets through these corridors that he has walked and retraced throughout his life and that he does not want to stop walking.

He came here since he was a child. He looked around the cardiology room while his father, Abdel Fuenmayor, who was a doctor in that service, was consulting. Surrounded by his father’s colleagues, he let his imagination fly and began to ask himself complex questions about the functioning of the human body and, fascinated, rather dazzled, he got the idea in his head that he also wanted to become a doctor.

—What happens when the heart stops? —he asked his father one day, who was in front of what is now the Abdel M. Fuenmayor P Cardiovascular Research Center.

“It stops beating, and the blood supply to the body stops,” he replied.

—And what doctor helps patients when they are like this?

—When a patient arrives in that state, he or she enters as an emergency or is taken directly to the ICU. In those places they have the tools to save your life.

—I want to do that, save lives.

—I think it’s great, son! But remember that not everything is science, you must also maintain the human connection.

That child continued coming to the hospital, he grew up, and without detours in the destiny that he began to envision that day, he studied medicine. He would never stop remembering that conversation with his father that was the seed of his career. The answer his father gave him began to shed light on the specialty he was going to choose in the future.

The emergency rooms, the adrenaline, the dizzying moments in which decisions must be made quickly and assertively to stabilize a vulnerable, at-risk human being. He found all this fascinating. At first, the newly graduated Dr. Akbar wanted to be an emergency doctor. I was willing to pursue that second specialty. But he discovered that there were few intensivists. And, taking into account that he also liked children, he went to Caracas for a while, to become a pediatric intensivist at the José Manuel de Los Ríos Hospital.

Later, in 1990, he returned, as always, to the Instituto Autónomo Hospital Universitario de Los Andes.

At that time, this medical center had many resources. He even found that there were doctors who came from abroad to practice here. Dr. Akbar says that sometimes they even adapted the service to people’s needs:

—Once, we broke the care protocols in intensive care. I had been in the ICU for two years, and there was still no pediatric wing, but a child arrived poisoned by a snake, and we treated him as required. We had a team to do even those most complicated maneuvers. On that occasion, a complete blood exchange was applied: that is, options were always sought to save the patients.

“But now not only would that not be possible,” laments Akbar, with a more hardened face than a while ago when he arrived, “but for a person to be admitted to the ICU they must be in serious condition: in shock or have heart failure.” respiratory.

Dr. Akbar has been told that his specialty is well valued abroad. They have told him that perhaps by going to another country he could earn much more than the few dollars he earns as a salary. They have suggested that he engage in private consultation.

One day, he was informed that, after more than 30 years of service, he had been retired. He could stay at home, dedicate himself to something else, perhaps rest a little… “But who told them that I wanted to leave?” he asked himself and ran to say no, that he continued, that he did not accept that they should stop. their services.

Because? Why do you insist on coming back? Your answer seems simple, but it is not that simple:

—I can’t imagine life without being here. I have this variety of activities that are spiritually enriching for me. In a private practice I wouldn’t be able to do as much.

Akbar loves life as a doctor, the full nature of what it means to be linked to public health and the University of Los Andes. He gets up every morning, on his way to his gray tower to fulfill the mission of caring for people, teaching his students and researching inside a university hospital in the Venezuelan Andes.

This history was produced in the first cohort of the Training Program for Journalists of Our Life.