Friday March 13 and Saturday March 14

    Our final day on this trip, and I found myself more anxious than I had expected. We usually have last minute operations to do, but today we had none, in large part because we were caught up in thinking about what we should expect on our way home and asked that our schedule remain free. The Corona issue is looming large, and will clearly have an impact on our journey.
    We went to the hospital around 9, and said our goodbyes to patients and staff. We packed up those things we were bringing back(path specimens, our supply bags, etc); I picked up some slides from JFK Pathology for review and further study in Waterbury, and then we left around noon to go back to the hotel. We had lunch and a couple of Club beers, showered, and packed. Masmina came to see us off when the shuttle bus came at 4 for our trip to the airport.
     The process at the airport starts with a security check, then baggage check in, then Liberian immigration check, then the metal detector etc. I knew we had a problem when Sepehr stepped up to the security check and they had him stand to the side. This was Friday evening; the Trump travel ban was going into effect at midnight. Sepehr is a Canadian citizen in the US to work at Waterbury Hospital on a J-1 visa; they determined that he was not eligible to fly to the US from Brussels because he didn't meet the criteria set out under the travel ban. After what seemed like an eternity to us sitting in the lounge upstairs, he finally emerged to say that he would fly with us to Brussels, but then would have to wait there till Monday when he will fly to Toronto, his hometown. Once there, he will contact the American Embassy to find out when he will be allowed back into the US to resume his residency; my guess is that they will say he must stay in Canada for 14 days from the date he leaves Belgium before he can come in. Having to stay in Brussels isn't the worst thing in the world, but it seems quite absurd to deny him entry while we are allowed to return.
     We arrived in Brussels around 5am, and then departed for Newark around 10:30am ( Brussels Airlines had cancelled their flight to JFK(NY) and put us on a United flight to Newark instead. We arrived at 1:20pm, and once the plane stopped at the gate, we got up to deplane. They then announced that we needed to sit down because the CDC had forms we needed to fill out, but they hadn't brought the forms to the plane yet. After a few minutes the forms arrived and were distributed; then they said we need to wait until some of the people from other flights had cleared before they would let us deplane. Around 1:45pm they said we could get off, and join the line of people waiting to be screened with questions and a temperature check. After that there was Immigration; I was directed to the back room for more questions about where I was coning from, how long I had been in Belgium, etc.; interestingly, Mohammad gave them the same information that I did and was cleared without being called into the back room. Today I read that people in other airports like Chicago and Dallas were spending up to 8 hours in line awaiting clearance, so I guess I shouldn't complain.
     All in all, it was another excellent trip. We did a total of 61 cases with good variety, and some very interesting cases for which we will rely on pathology to give us the diagnosis. Our team worked well together, and meshed very well with the Liberian staff. I think for Sepehr and Mohammad, it was a wonderful trip in which they learned a lot about their knowledge and abilities, and began to understand the responsibility of being a surgeon.
     I found it fascinating that while people in the US often think about Liberia as a very poor, conflicted country full of hazards for us, on this trip with all of the hullabaloo over Corona and the financial market free fall, Liberia was a peaceful oasis for us. Until the end, we were able to focus on the task at hand and not think too much about the wailing voices far away bemoaning the end of the world. I found that I couldn't ignore those voices because the internet is ubiquitous, but being in Liberia allowed me to put them in perspective and feel a little more certain that we will all survive this crisis.