It is almost standard practice in towns and villages in Montenegro to call medical technicians doctors. It is no wonder, because doctors come and go, and they are always there to provide medical assistance whenever needed. That is the case with sixty-three-year-old Dragan Krsmanović - a technician at the Šavnica health station who is slowly counting 40 years of experience.
It is difficult to count all the interventions he performed during his four decades of service - from the usual ones, giving injections, dressing wounds, to childbirth, tooth extractions, suturing wounds, abdominal punctures, providing therapy...
He says he loves his job, people even more, and he had someone to learn from.
He chose the white coat because of mathematics.
"I wanted to be a technician or a civil engineer, but I somehow neglected math and didn't do well in it, and medicine didn't require much math. Since I lost my father early on, and my sister married in Berane, they invited me to come to them and enroll in medical school. And so it was. I finished medical school without a single A. I tried to enroll in the Faculty of Medicine in 1982 and 1983. However, even though I was an excellent student, it was difficult to enroll in medicine. One year I tried in Belgrade, the next in Sarajevo, but about 3-4 thousand people applied there, and they only accepted 200-250. I have no one up there, so I stayed in high school," says Dragan, who was born "in the middle of Šavnik", and his Krsmanovićs are from the village of Slatina, where his father was born.
After failing to enroll in medicine, he went to Nikšić, enrolled in the Faculty of Education, but left after the first year, because he realized that the job of an educator was not for him. He returned to Šavnik and worked at the post office for a year, after which he began volunteering at the local Health Center and doing an internship. This was in the fall of 1985.
"Back then, this was a health center with an inpatient unit, over 40 workers were employed, and we had up to 30 patients a day, because at that time there were about five thousand inhabitants in our municipality. We had over 800 workers in production back then, industry was developed, there were a lot of young people, a lot of everything. But, little by little, Šavnik is on the margins today," says the technician with regret, lamenting the times when life flourished in the town with three waters and two dawns.
Labud, Miraš, Krsto - doctors from whom there was something to learn
When he started working, the Health Center had two doctors, a pneumophysiologist Labud Minić and an internist and cardiologist Miraš Tomić, while Krsto Rajković was specializing in pediatrics.
"They were real doctors, experts, and anyone who wanted to could learn a lot from them," says Dragan, who completed his medical practice in the army, at the garrison clinic in New Belgrade, where there were more than 50 employees and they had up to 300 patients a day.
"There I acquired a little bit of a trade and connected my knowledge from high school with practice. And then in Šavnik I learned my trade from doctors. I had something to learn from. So one morning, Dr. Minić said to me: 'Do you want me to teach you to listen to your lungs, kid? You were a good student, I see you're interested'. And so I followed him to the appointment and for about 20 minutes he showed me what it looks like when healthy lungs are working. And then we moved on to pneumonia, obstructive bronchitis and things like that. He shows me and when he finds a place where there is pneumonia, he tells me: 'Listen now and remember'. What a person he was. Miraš Tomić was also an exceptionally good expert. But Miraš liked to joke, while Labud was serious".
Dragan recalls that at that time radio stations were deployed in the villages, one in Bijela and the other in Duži, that they had landlines in Boan and Bukovica, and that he and Dr. Tomić often had to walk several kilometers in the winter to reach a patient.
“Snow used to fall in Šavnik in November and stay there until May. There was no cleaning because there wasn't much machinery, and you went by car as long as you could, and then on foot. Whoever called, you had to go. There were days, we would leave at seven in the morning, and return at ten in the evening. The longest route we walked on foot in the snow was Bijela-Kravica, about seven or eight kilometers, and the snow was up to our waists. Miraš Tomić, my colleague Dragan Šćepanović and I, we walked on snow along some sides, fell, and if we didn't die, I think we'll live a hundred years. And we regularly knew how to walk 5-6 kilometers.”
In the early 1990s, Dr. Minić left for Serbia and then to America, Tomić became a prison doctor, and the Health Center in Šavnik merged with the Nikšić Health Center and became a health station with half the number of workers.
"Then Dr. Rajković returned from his residency. What a doctor he was, a genius. I don't think there will be anyone like him. He discovered heart defects in three children here just by listening to them, sent them to Belgrade, where they found the same thing he said, operated on them, and that's how he saved those children. He was truly a wonderful man, full of knowledge, and from him a person could learn the most, as far as he knew. However, bad times came, the party split, he opted for Bulatović (Momir), and they removed him from here. And he was a true person, he didn't look at people based on who was in which party, who was of what nationality. He worked to the max, but, well, that didn't work either."
With his departure, says Krsmanović, doctors in Šavnik began to change.
"Over 30 doctors have changed. Now, one doctor comes for five days, then another for five days, and our Sanja Bušaj, who worked here for seven or eight years, is now doing her specialization in Brezovik, and comes here on weekends to help. Today, the health station has 13 workers, including the doctor, and almost 80 percent of the employees are from Šavnik and villages in our municipality."
The baby girl he brought into the world was named after him.
In 40 years of work, for about 17 years there was only one doctor in Šavnik. The terrain is rugged, about 550 square kilometers, with patients everywhere, and a doctor cannot reach everywhere, so technicians often had to perform numerous interventions themselves. Dragan, by force of circumstances, often performed the work of a midwife.
"From Mara and Rajka, two awesome midwives who delivered a thousand children, I also learned how to give birth. I must have helped the midwives during the birth of a hundred women, and I gave birth to six women myself. All the children are alive and healthy. The midwives taught me, in case I was left alone and someone had to give birth, to examine pregnant women, to know when to drive them to Nikšić, and when they had to give birth in our clinic. I gave birth to a colleague from the pharmacy, and one girl was named after me, Dragana. I gave birth to her mother here in interventions, because she couldn't even get up to the room."
He says he remembers one birth in particular. Doctor Spasoje Tomašević, nurse Mara Cerović and the driver went to the village of Strug for an emergency, and they called from Bijela to say that the pregnant woman had bled profusely. Dragan called the doctor to ask him what to do, and he told him to take the "Lada" and drive her to Nikšić urgently, so that she wouldn't lose the baby. Thinking that he would just take her to Nikšić, he didn't take any of the equipment, but when they got above the school, the birth began. He cut the umbilical cord with a razor and tied the navel with a surgical glove that he found in the car's drawer.
"I have nothing with me, I don't have a diaper to put on the child, who, luckily, immediately cried. When she says: 'There's another child, I'm carrying twins'. So I call Spasoje to tell him that Mara is running here, that I'm giving birth to a woman and that she has another child. Luckily, they were nearby and Mara arrived to give birth to the second child. Everything went well, both the mother and the children are alive and healthy, and I received an icon from them as a gift for successfully delivering her," Dragan recalls the birth that remains the most memorable for him.
When the schoolboy stitches up the wound, everything must go well.
With Miraš Tomić, he also learned, as he says, to “stitch up wounds.” Dr. Tomić only sent patients with serious injuries to Nikšić, and treated other wounds in Šavnik.
"We have never sent a patient with minor injuries to go through Krnovo to Nikšić, to have his wound stitched up and waste time. Here we stitch the wound, give him a tetanus shot, prescribe an antibiotic and go to the patient's home when the dressing needs to be finished. I must have sewn up a wound 30 times myself. So once Krsto Rajković called me to come, even though I wasn't prepared. One of my schoolmates had a fight in the city, they hit him on the head with a bar and no one would sew his head up but me. There were 27 stitches, the wound healed nicely and after half a year nothing was recognizable. He didn't want to go for an X-ray of his head because of the hematoma. He says: 'This is what the school sewed up for me, it won't hurt me'. And he didn't get hurt."
With Miraš Tomić, he learned to perform abdominal puncture.
"In the village of Timar, there was a patient who had liver cancer. With liver cancer, the stomach fills with fluid and an abdominal puncture has to be done. I went with Miraš to see that patient 2-3 times and helped him. At that time, Miraš was already working as a doctor himself, many patients come, and they call him from Timar to tell him that the stomach is full. He tells me: 'You go and finish it today'. I ask him how I should do the puncture, and he says: 'I taught you, I did, go and get the woman's water out'. I go, drain seven liters of fluid, and then I did an abdominal puncture myself four or five times," says the technician, whom half of the people of Šavnica call "doctor".
He remembers, he says, the commissions (febrile convulsions) and the administration of phenobarbital, and "the administration of therapy", and the boy, now a lawyer, who "shortened his life by ten years".
"I was ready and Dr. Tomašević called me to come urgently. When I got there, the boy collapsed. We barely got him back and the doctor told me to go with the boy and his mother to Nikšić, as an escort. The little one came back, got his color, and when we were at the Vojnik tunnel, the child started to choke again. He turned blue, I saw he had no pulse, the mother was crying and whining. I immediately started artificial respiration and heart massage and it seemed to me that his heart was blue, the longer I massaged him. The fight must have lasted about 20 minutes. The little one started to choke and take in air, I gave artificial respiration, then massaged him again, and brought him back to life. He must have shortened my life by ten years. My father later told me that they never diagnosed him... There he is, now he will serve justice," Dragan says proudly because he is aware that although his little patient "shortened" his life, he extended his own.
They had to know more than their colleagues.
He recalls how dentist Manjo Tomić taught him how to extract teeth and that he extracted a thousand of them, that he helped a fellow dental technician because he was not skilled at giving injections, that he learned to read EKGs very well, that, unfortunately, there was no salvation for several "good people, acquaintances" and that their deaths were hard for him. He says that there were also moments when the team would have fun, roast lamb or cook beans, and even sing a little.
"Don't let my colleagues from Nikšić or Podgorica hold it against me, but we had to know more than them. They have a doctor next to them, he does everything, and they help him, and we were often left alone, because the terrain is rugged, so the doctor couldn't reach everywhere," says "doctor" Krsmanović, who intends to work until the age of 66.
It is not worth it for him to retire with only one condition fulfilled, as his colleague did, who has a pension of 320 euros.
"Technicians' salaries have always been low, so I have to 'make up' both statuses, because when I get a full pension, something will happen. I'm just sorry that Šavnik is being marginalized. There's no youth, no industry, no jobs, no people. Children have to leave Šavnik and look for a piece of bread," said a Šavnik resident whose three children also left the town named after the tough willow branches.
Bonus video:
