My alarm went off 5 hours later and I got ready for a long day in the OR. I turned on CNN as I dressed just as the news regarding Osama bin Laden broke. I have to admit, I had a momentary panic as Wolf Blitzer told me Osama was dead and, by the way, originally from the very city I found myself in…Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. My email alert immediately started going off as multiple alerts from the State Department to Americans travelling in the Middle East went out. They warned me to not go outside if possible. Then my mom called (how did she know already?). I looked out my window onto the Red Sea and did not see any crowds gathering or mass demonstrations. I called my new friend and host for the trip, Wissam, and asked what I should do. He reassured me that it would be fine, as the Saudis did not really consider him Saudi anymore. With his reassurance, we went off to the hospital to operate. I did, however, spend a lot of time looking over my shoulder and pretending I understood the Arabic people spoke around me.
The first hospital was the main public hospital in Jeddah. It was probably a training center for Muslims from all over the world as I saw people who looked Asian and Eastern European as well as Arab. We went into the locker room where an attendant from India gave us scrubs and shoes and put my bag into a locker. I was introduced to the OR staff and was taken to meet the head nurse.
The hospital was very clean but looked like almost any other 30-year-old public hospital in the world. The tile was worn, the walls had some scuffs, and finding a parking spot was nearly impossible (just like in the US). But the staff was kind and the patients grateful for the hard work of the surgeons and OR staff.
The patient was a man with a low rectal cancer. I don’t think the Saudi surgeons thought it could be done laparoscopically, but they wanted to see me try. I could tell they wanted to give me a difficult case and make me prove my mettle (this would be repeated in every hospital I visited). My first goal was avoid doing anything that would cause bleeding. Everyone was so incredibly hospitable and tried to get me all the instruments I use in the US. Unfortunately, they didn’t have many of the ones I use. The operating room was spacious and accommodated the surgical team and the several students and surgeons who were there to watch. Like most OR’s in hospitals built before the laparoscopic era, the equipment was placed in the room as if an afterthought (it was). The video monitors were small and gave a picture reminiscent of the TV pictures when we first got cable at my parents’ house in 1983.
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