In late November, I had the foot that I broke in a bizarre accident in the Beijing Airport in 1992 surgically repaired here in Oman....in Muscat, the capital, not here in the hinterlands of Salalah where anything goes (more about that later.) All rooms in the hospital are single, but furnished with a pull-out sofa bed and 2 arm chairs....assuming that, as in the case of an Omani male, his 4 wives and their innumerable children will be present throughout his stay. Patients are asked when they would like their meals delivered, and amazingly, meals are presented at the requested time! The surgeon and the anesthesiologist were wonderful, but the nursing staff left much to be desired...no help to the bathroom post-op, no help figuring out how to shower with a knee-high cast, no response to requests for pain meds, and the enforcement of odd (dangerous) rituals like massaging a clotted IV line with the apparatus still in place. Nevertheless, after 6 days in the hospital (6 because physicians here are not permitted to prescribe narcotics for out-patients, and re-breaking a foot and inserting hardware is a painful procedure) I was discharged to return to Salalah. The usual chaos prevailed at the airport, but in the end, a soldier who was hanging around with not much to do, purloined a wheelchair and got me through security, despite the beep from the newly implanted hardware. As my wheelchair was loaded onto the lift that takes the food up into the plane, he knocked on my cast with his rifle, and said. "Camel milk 3 times a day for 1 week. Hallas." As my basket-lift device opened onto the plane, the captain greeted me at the door, and in a heavy Spanish accent said, "Welcome aboard. We been waiting; we couldn't leave without you."
