During my tour of the hospital, I met some of the doctors already there. I think that I was the only one there on a trial basis, since a lot of them had families with them. The whole place was brand new. It had been opened about three months before. The only native Saudi doctor in the whole place was an anesthesiologist who had trained at the Mayo Clinic. There were a few Americans, some Brits, some Canadians, and a Turk or two. Although I only became close with a couple, the rest were quite congenial and all seemed to be well trained. The nursing staff was predominately British, American, and Canadian in supervisory roles and Filipino as floor nurses. They all tended to interact with doctors a bit more pleasantly than their USA counterparts, but that is a two way street.
One of my first surprises was the fact that the hospital had NO real neurosurgical operating instruments. Never fear, my predecessor had already ordered them ,and they were to be in the kingdom shortly. More about that later. I was asked to tell them when I wanted to have clinic and when I wanted to schedule operating times. There were general surgery, ophthalmologic, ENT, dental, and other procedures up and running. There was an active OB-GYN service also. The clinics were both in the hospital and in downtown Taif. The latter was the most interesting by far, as was a visit several times to the old Taif hospital. In this facility, likely built during the Ottoman Empire, one felt like he was far removed from the modern world outside.
After the hospital tour, I was taken, along with my bags to The Sheraton Al Hada Hotel. I was led to believe that this was only for a short time before I was to be moved to a spot in one of the several dormitories in the hospital compound. Truth became, I was a resident of this hotel for the duration. That was not bad, I had a beautiful room for two facing the hospital about a mile away, with a nice bath (with bidet), an alcove on entering held a small refrigerator. Bottled water was delivered daily, and it was used even for tooth brushing. The hotel had a coffee shop where I frequently had a continental breakfast, and I was picked up each AM by the hospital van. In those days, the knees were in marathon shape, so I usually was up before daylight to run down the hill from the hotel and onto the expressway that ran by the hotel's site and contained no traffic.
It was downright cold in the early AM, but nice and quiet. The prayer call from the mosque would begin at daybreak, and the kids would begin to come out of the dessert to wait for a school bus. The children are beautiful and anxious to see people who don't look like themselves. Once the girls reach puberty, things change. They are veiled, and if I approached one on foot, she would move away and turn her back. Occasionally, I would meet a goat or two, since animals and cars share the expressway. Only as one got close to Taif about ten miles away, did the cars appear and use appropriate lanes. I was told that these nice roadways had been built by Scandinavian companies. Saudi drivers were on the par with those in bumper cars that one rides at carnivals, etc.
On my first day in the hospital, I renewed my orientation and found that there was little to do. My two closest friends in SA were to be Handley Coles and Loren Ryan. Handley was a British pediatrician in SA on a two year contract. He lived in retirement in Wales, and like many Brits, he needed the money even in retirement. Loren was a neurologist from California, divorced, and there for reasons that I never really explored. Both guys were fun, and we all lived in the hotel, played a lot of gin rummy, and talked about drinking gin a lot. I had taken the pledge on arrival in the kingdom, thinking that when in the kingdom, do as the kingdom says. Loren and Handley were not of that mind.
Saudi Arabia is alcohol free, but be sure that does not mean there isn't plenty to be had. There was a thriving business in homemade "hootch", and in all the foreign compounds, bars could be found. Drunkenness was punished by whipping, so drinkers were smart to stay in their compounds when imbibing. Drugs likewise were banned, but I learned that members of the royal family, especially, the young princesses were prone to addiction. My tour in SA included the holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years' Eve. This was cause for me to be a designated driver on at least one of those days. I'll remember that because while sitting in a bar in the compound of a large armament company, I had occasion to talk with an interesting character while Handley and Loren were getting polluted. His name was "Fast Eddie". He was an American who ran booze from some where up near Israel down through the dessert to Taif. At ninety dollars a fifth for a bottle of scotch, he must have been doing OK. If he had been caught, it would not have been pleasant if he lived. The bedouins would have robbed and killed him, or the religious police would have jailed him. I never saw a Saudi jail, but I was told that if jailed, a person's family was responsible for his food and water. The jails didn't run a hospitality service.
Days at the hospital consisted mostly of reading in the library, walking the compound, eating lunch, and generally trying to pass the time. On clinic days, I would go into town with Loren to a few patients. Occasionally, there was a consult to see in the town hospital, but mostly I just waited for this load of neurosurgical equipment sure to be just around the corner. Well, it turned out that this stuff arrived two days before I left in mid-January! Lot of good that did me. I did a sum total of three cases in two months; not a week's activity back in Alabama. The Saudis had so much money that they had taken my predecessor's order list and DOUBLED it! There was enough neurosurgical equipment for TWO hospitals when I left, and as far as I know, there was no new man immediately following me.
My three cases were done with some orthopedic instruments that one of the surgical nurses put together for me to approve. She was one of those scrub nurses that could anticipate what I wanted as I realized it myself. We did two herniated lumbar discs and burr holes for a closed head injury. One of the discs was on a Saudi's wife, and the other was on a Royal Air Force pilot who had trained in TX and IL. Both were happy with their results, as was I. The woman and her husband spoke no English, so one of the Jordanian women translators helped me on rounds etc. On discharge, her husband presented me with a brand new Gruen wrist watch. As I thanked him, the translator cautioned me not to be too appreciative, or else the man would not think highly of me. The pilot patient and I had some interesting conversations. He was congenial but frank in his assessment of western values. "You have your rules and laws, and we have ours, but we abide by ours." Apparently western culture in a big US city such as Chicago had turned him off. The closed head injury will come in another chapter.
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