Sunday - Trevor

Sunday, June 12^th

So, Jessica lied. It’s Trevor again and I am making a direct contribution to this blog once again (much to her displeasure, but I am sure all of you readers are excited), since she is too tired to blog today. But anyway, today marked our second day of “work” (aka following the students and doctors around the hospital as much as possible, trying to stay out of the way, and soaking up as much knowledge as possible) at Sultan Qaboos University Hospital. Yesterday at this time, I was extremely nervous; Today I strutted confidently up to the main desk on 3 Red, which is the neurology floor, to find out the doctor I am supposed to shadow would not be in today. So instead, I was passed off to another doctor, Dr. Anwar, who took me to that morning’s neurology team meeting, which involved a research paper presentation. This eerily reminded me of the many presentations I had to do in undergrad, where I would present a research paper to my class and the class would spend the rest of the time asking questions to pick apart the paper and my conclusions.

After that, I jumped in with the 5^th year medical students who were doing their bed side teaching class. The doctor had the students interview the patients then took them through the step-by-step process of critical thinking in clinical medicine, telling them what tests and physical exam skills they should perform and how they should approach making a diagnosis based on their findings. I also had another brush with Omani culture…I had been introduced to the three male students who were in the class today yesterday, so I greeted them warmly. However, there was one new student, who was a female. I smiled and stretched out my hand and said “Hi, I’m Trevor. What’s your name?” and she immediately withdrew her hands and shook her head, embarrassed. I immediately became concerned. I mean, I like to think that I’m not that intimidating or anything. It turns out it is the custom in Oman that males do not shake hands with females unless the females offer to first. Oh well, I’ve been rejected before, I’ll live. After the students left, I rounded with Dr. Anwar and Dr. Ahmed, his 3^rd year resident until lunch.

Lunch was interesting today. To begin, I spilled soap all over my white coat, resulting in a bright pink stain being clearly visible on my coat. That will be fun to explain to people, since it stands out. I’m sure at some point I’ll get tired of explaining that it is soap and start telling people it is some unidentified bodily fluid. I arrived at lunch as Claire was leaving and Jessica and Emma (the Finnish foreign exchange student that we met) were sitting at an already full table, so I sat with the three male students that I had rounded with this morning. We were talking about some of the differences between Oman and the United States when the topic of religion came up. I tread very carefully, as one of the students seemed particularly well-studied on religions and I know very little about Islam, so I did not want to offend him in anyway. Overall the conversation was positive though. We talked about the “call to prayer” chants, which go off 5 times throughout the day and echo throughout the city. I complimented him on how it seemed to be a daily reminder about the religion that they practiced, and that some people in the United States attend church on Sundays but go throughout the week without building their faith.

After lunch, I went to the ICU where I saw some very interesting cases. One girl was maybe a year or two old and suffered from cerebral palsy with encephalopathy. She was kept in a sedated state and severely deformed. She had no muscle tone and her feet and hands were at right angles from her ankles and wrists, respectively. I got lost trying to find my way out of the ICU, which is in a different section of the hospital. I managed to find my way out of the hospital though and made my way to the assembly point, where Claire and I met the driver to take us back to the hotel. Jessica stayed behind to get internet access, so she got a ride with a student back to the hotel later.

Once back at the hotel, I crashed. I hadn’t slept well the night before, so my head hit my pillow and I was out, only to be awoken by Musleh at 6:30 as a reminder that he was taking us to the market and was waiting down in the lobby for us. We went down to the lobby and met Musleh, Mohammed (his friend who we had met previously), Emma, and a new exchange student from France, Margeux (at least I think that’s how it was spelled, its either that or Margaux, but anyway it is pronounced Mar-go ((Jess: it’s really Margaux))). We rode to the market, so while the girls went jewelry shopping, Musleh and I sat on the “man-benches”, which were clearly there in the shops for the guys to sit on while the women shopped for jewelry. Afterward, we went and got ice cream and Mishkak (I think it’s called, the barbeque beef on a stick thing, It’s so good, I love it, I ate like 8 sticks of it again tonight). Then we went to Musleh’s dad’s shisha café to eat and have a little bit of shisha. I wasn’t enthralled with the idea of having shisha two nights in a row, but I didn’t want to turn down going to the café since it was owned by Musleh’s dad. On the way, Margeux gave me the nickname “Toad” for “Trevor the toad” from Harry Potter, which I admittedly somewhat deserved since I had been teasing her about her not remembering my name. Oh well, I’ve been called worse. We relaxed at the café, watched a bad movie on the big screen television (some Steven Seagull movie. It was awful. But one of those bad movies that is so bad that it is kind of good in a funny way). A little while later, some of Mohammed’s friends came out and we continued to talk until about 10, then Mohammed took us back to the hotel. Anyway, I’m headed to bed, day 3 of the observership coming up tomorrow and hopefully Jessica will be back up and blogging. Peace.