Goodbye Room 552

As I closed the door to the hotel room heading toward the hotel lobby to check out, a strange feeling came to me. I felt a knot in my chest, a flash back of the past few days with their ups and downs. There were moments of despair and others of triumph. The Syrian refugees are living a miserable life. We came to their life for few hours every day and then went back to the comfort of our hotel rooms and they went back to their daily misery. We will go back to our usual daily routine that steal us away from their plight but they will be there in the desert caravans, in the valley tents, and in the little molded rooms.

When I came here I was seeking three goals, as you know, but I did not know that one could accomplished way more in one week. I did get an update and some vision about the dialysis situation in Jordan, I certainly saw for myself the suffering of my country men and women and I hope that I helped as much as I can. Never in my life I functioned on this intensity with as little sleep as I did. In addition to that, I didn't know that I will be meeting so many great people from all over the world that will open my eyes to whole different worlds. Also, I didn't know that this week will be a mirror into my soul.

I met great humanitarians, wonderful attorneys, amazing pharmacists, and great physicians. They came from all over the world to help with the Syrian refugees. They came from Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Palestine and Jordan, and many from the USA. The newly graduate Jordanian doctors who volunteered with us were also truly amazing.

I will not deny that there were moments of doubts about the usefulness of all of this but my friends and colleagues words and encouragements made a huge uplifting impact to keep us going. There was the day that I was with Dr. Green in the poorly ventilated caravan in Zaatari camp seeing patients with such scarce resources. I was seeing cases that were either too simple to be even seen or too complicated that I don't have the resources to deal with or the chance to offer any continuity of care. I got frustrated and told him "I don't know if we are making a difference in these people's lives or medical issues!" Dr. Green with his reassuring voice answered without hesitation "Majd, think of us as the psychiatrists assistants! They are here and they are seeing these complicated PTSD cases and we are here to listen to these people too, and show them that we care". This simple conversation redirected my effort that day and kept me going, listening and helping with a smile and energy.

Mission Medicine is a unique spice of medicine. It intertwines the use of limited resources, and the scarcity of continuity of care, with cultural perception of medicine. One treats the patients with what one has at the time that one has it and within the framework of their cultural understanding of medicine. It is crucial that native physicians familiar with the culture and the language be an integral part of any medical mission but doctors from other nationalities are no less important. They are the ones that show the patients that the world is truly listening to them and standing by them.

We have written a healing word in the book of suffering of the Syrian refugees in Jordan but there are many chapters to write and I am hoping to be there to help writing them.