I left Hartford at 5:45 this morning - a 3:00 am departure from the house with my trusty driver (Randy.) After five hours at Dulles, I left for Beijing on a plane full of Chinese families. There was also a large contingent of Indians, one of whom sat next to me and explained that this group was meeting up with another two groups to make 60 in all. They are setting off on a 16 day tour of China. He’s lived in the US for 30 years and is in the hotel business. When I asked if he had hotels in China and India as well, he rolled his eyes in perfect imitation of my three year old granddaughter and said, “it’s impossible to do business with all of the trickery.” After explaining about bribes and payoffs and favoritism, he said, “In the USA everything is straightforward and honest. I can just run my business and make money.” So there you go.
About 2 hours before the end of the flight, a call went out for a doctor on the plane. A 62 year old woman was having chest pain, vomiting, trouble breathing and numbness in her hands. Why is it that calls for doctors on planes are never about a five year old with an earache or a six year old who ran in the aisle, fell down and cut his knee? With adults, since they are unfamiliar medical territory for me, I always fear the worst – a pulmonary embolus (blood clot to the lung,) a heart attack, maybe even a stroke – all conditions I could do nothing about, over the ocean, approaching China’s shore. The woman did indeed look terrible, pale, sweaty and retching. However, a quick exam was reassuring so I told her she had a strong heartbeat and her breathing was fine, and asked the flight attendant for oxygen, a cold washcloth and hot tea with lots of sugar.
The woman was traveling with her daughter and six month old granddaughter, so they sat next to her and gradually her breathing calmed. Soon she felt better and in 15 minutes was playing with her granddaughter. My theory is that she hadn’t had much to eat or drink on the flight nor had she moved around much. When she finally tried to stand up, she got dizzy and nauseated, panicked and started to hyperventilate. As is often the case in medicine, she just needed some “medical authority” to reassure her that she was okay and wasn’t going to die. The oxygen and the sugar in the tea helped, but ultimately it was her ability to relax and slow her breathing that cleared her symptoms. It also didn’t hurt to have her granddaughter babbling and drooling on her. Since people don’t recover that quickly from any of the dire things I was imagining when I first saw her, I’m sticking to my “diagnosis.”
So, back to the Nanyang mission. Elisabeth, the program coordinator from the US told me that China now has two local Op Smile offices, and each one conducts a local mission every month. Op Smile international fills in team members where requested by the local coordinators. China is a real Op Smile success story. They started out over 20 years ago needing full support of the international teams, and now, in large part through the educational efforts that go with each mission, China does all it’s own cleft lip and palate repairs, with minimal support from the US.
Here in Beijing we are in one of the Marriott hotels and I’m on the 10th floor with a great view. The air was uncharacteristically clean when we came in, so I can see what a beautiful city this is. Marriott is a huge Op Smile China supporter and therefore donate their rooms for any foreigners on missions here. I remember how strange it felt when I was in Hohot, Inner Mongolia to be seeing patients in a poor hospital all day and then returning to luxury at night. I’m not sure if we are in a Marriott in Nanyang – we’ll see. Tomorrow we fly to Nanyang and I am hoping internet access is less restricted there. However, it’s a huge city so likely it will be similar to Beijing.
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