Getting toward the Red Sea (Personal)
As expected, our visit to Oman didn’t go as planned. Carter ended up having to take 3 people to the hospital. One was crew and he stayed there for some surgery. The other 2 were cardiac patients and Carter was going to deliver them to the cardiologist and return to the ship. Well, it took forever just to get off the ship. Everyone was ready and waiting by 7:30am, but they didn’t even get off the ship until after 10:00am. By this time, it was getting way too hot for me, so I bagged the visit and did stuff on the ship. Carter didn’t return until after 3pm that afternoon.
It ended up that it was Mohammed’s birthday, so everything was closed for a 4 day weekend. The cardiologist had agreed to come in on his day off and see Carter’s two patients. The way things work in Oman is that you pay for everything before you get it. So the consult had to be paid for, then the echo, then the EKG’s and so on. And they wanted cash only, no credit cards. Carter had made sure that he had the port agent’s number, so he was able to call him whenever another payment needed to be made. This whole process took hours, so naturally, they all got hungry and thirsty. Carter asked the port agent to go get them something to snack on (no idea what Omani’s snack on) and something to drink. The Port Agent returned with orange juice and Pepsi to drink and then his snack food was the Arabic equivalent of Twinkies. Carter was aghast!
At the end, the total for all of the tests, plus the 2 consults was less than $500. And this was on a vacation day for the doctor. Good price by our standards.
Some of the nurses and passengers had great stories after their visit here. Most of them saw wild camels, and some even feasted on camel meat. The people were most friendly and most wanted to discuss politics. With the language barrier, this was difficult, but they certainly weren’t happy with our foreign policy and wanted to know how the general public felt. Some awkward moments.
We got invited to another Captain’s dinner. Why me? It must be Carter’s electric personality.
Labels: Personal
posted by Hills @ 2:15 AM
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