No medical training could prepare me for a 'life-genocide balance' [View all]

By Talal Ali Khan^

It has been more than a month since a “ceasefire” took hold in Gaza. That, of course, does not mean that the killing of Palestinians has stopped. It simply means that it has been reduced to a rate that allows international media to ignore it.

And so, the world has largely moved on from the story. But I haven’t.

In July 2024, I joined a medical mission to Gaza and spent 22 days there, volunteering at hospitals. What I came back with is something I cannot easily explain.

The man my family knew, the son, brother, and husband they laughed with, the father who played with his children, feels lost to them now.

I call him the “previous Talal”.

My children, wife, siblings, parents, friends and colleagues, they all see the change. They tell me I have become distant, quiet, detached, and sometimes hard to reach. My emotions are messy and raw in ways words often fail to capture. It is not a single feeling, but a swarm of emotions that is not going away despite the news of a “ceasefire” and reassurances of “reconstruction”.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/11/16/no-medical-training-could-prepare-me-for-a-life-genocide-balance

*Talal Ali Khan is a US-based medical doctor. He is a nephrology specialist. (So not some wild-eyed middle-Eastern radical)
I would say he is suffering from a world-class case of PTSD, as any right-thinking person probably would in this situation