New Year's Eve

Saturday, December 31 . . . . Happy New Year

Weekends can sometimes be a little tedious, but not today. Rick said to be at his house at 9:30 this morning. When I arrived, Joann and Sam Silverstein were there. After a while Rick arrived from the gym.

A bit later we set out for Mother Theresa’s mission with Rick’s staff of 3 assistants in a separate cab. Road was closed near the Mission, so we parked and walked more than 1/2 mile to get there.

In a small waiting room were at least 60 people as we passed into the exam room, an 8x10 ft. cubicle. During the next 6 hours we saw 30 or 40 patients, nearly all under the age of 25 and most under 15. Remarkable pathology; a dozen with heart disease including two in serious congestive failure; at least two dozen kids with profound scoliosis. In my field, was a post-op with acromegaly (operated by a neurosurgeon from Norway who left the day I arrived), a new pituitary tumor that I will likely be operating in the next week or two, a patient with serious paraparesis that we are working up, and several other neurosurgical problems.

We were all fascinated by both the interesting cases, and Rick’s very uncommon manner, particularly with the youth. Our only break was at 2:00 for tea. Rick’s lunch is a cup of tea and a cup of coffee. Fortunately one of his aides brought us a banana. Actually he bought several dozen bananas and gave them to everyone still left in the waiting room.

In the course of the day, Rick’s instructions for several of the cardiac patients was to get a passport and return next week. He hands them 300 birr (about $18) to pay for the passport and will be paying about $9,000 for each to fly to India for their heart surgery.

I told him that I could only do the pituitary tumor at the Korean Hospital as we will need special microsurgical instruments for a trans-sphenoidal operation. This is a private for profit hospital (in contrast to the Black Lion where all care is free). He said no problem, he will pay for it (about $7,500).

Quite a remarkable day.