So I Guess I’m A Medical Assistant Now, Part I: I almost assist in an Internal Cardioversion. Which is Heart Surgery.

“The computer isn’t on,” I say.

Half a dozen heart surgeons and technicians, clustered around a computer station pieced together from the nineties, ignore me. The monitors flash the red, green, and blue acknowledgement of the special personal existence that lacks external stimuli. From the operating table a foot away, the patient gives me weak smile. The wires sticking out of her hip veins vibrate gently in the air.

I’m standing awkwardly at the foot of the operation table, wearing a lead apron and neck guard over the cotton pants and flip flops I walked around in all day. I am to be assisting the application of electric shocks of the patient’s heart muscle to stop her tachycardia, or rapid heartbeat—a process known amongst us medical folk as an Internal Cardioversion—but the entire process is stymied on account of a computer error.

See, when trying to run the 1998 DOS-based software, the command “DGR.exe” was unable to be performed because the DGICDEV$ could not connect to the device. (Obviously.) The error message led the technician to turn off the entire computer station, but subsequent unplugging and replugging and reunplugging of plugs distracts from the original problem by casually creating several more.

Have I mentioned that the patient lay on the table in plain sight? With wires sticking out of her hip? Oh, good.

A few minutes later, Doctor Ibrahim—the incubus for my role and presence in this affair—acknowledges my observation. “Ah, she is clever girl! Well done, this was your first test,” he chuckles, giving me an air high five with his sterilized gloves. But the computer box does not seem to contain a power switch. Ten minutes pass. More things are plugged into different plugs. At last, a hidden reset button is found. Monitor A springs to command-line life.

The system restarts. An error: the date and time are incorrect. I translate, hoping to negate further delays. “Ah, not important,” says Dr. Ibrahim. The system self-scans—the largest drive contains all of 18 gig. The software loads, the technician clicks, all seems to be working, but, oh.

The command “DGR.exe” cannot be performed because DCISDEV$ cannot connect to the device.

The error contains four options: Return error to program, End program/interface/command, Retry program/command, and Find help. Each is dutifully translated, tried, retranslated, and retried. Clicking “Find help” brings up a line saying that no help can be found for this error, “Retry” does nothing as the error is absolute, “Return” closes the program, and “End” restarts the system. The latter is the favourite, leading to the system restarting and rescanning another twenty times over the next hour before the entire surgery is canceled and the patient mercifully rid of wires.

I help as much as I can, translating the words towards general understanding. Optical drives are removed and replaced. The date and time are eventually fixed, to no avail. I ask the technician for an explanation of the software—clearly, the error comes because the button he clicks starts an .exe program that cannot connect to a device. No use. DGR and DGIC are a mystery to all involved.

Had everything gone as planned, a wire called a catheter would have been threaded from her hip, through her circulatory system, and wrapped around the inside of her heart. Computers would have measured voltages to find the exact location of her tachycardia, then performed series of low-voltage electric shocks that reprogram the heart for a new beat. She would have been cured. Now the patient cannot undergo surgery—she lives far away and apparently must return there, and computer station must wait a week before the Greek engineer can arrive to fix it. Oh, and this is the only private hospital in Syria able to perform this kind of operation.

Most notable out of this fiasco is the bizarre juxtaposition of US English-only software with a Syrian medical community that learns in Arabic. Unlike other foreign countries that often teach in English to accommodate the majority-English terminology, Syria stubbornly clings to a system that transliterates English into Arabic. From observing the technicians and doctors today—and their inability to troubleshoot their technology—I can only surmise that they learn their equipment by rote. 

Why, however, am I even here? A very good question. My cardiologist friend from the plane ride, Dr. Ibrahim, loves that I want to learn Arabic and so has made me into his new project. I’ve met his family and friends, been forced into random shops to ask the price of shoes, and taken to several hospitals to observe his work. I sat in to two hours of a medical conference at one of Damascus’ many heart institutes and learned about elongated R waves (whatever they are) in Arabic. No one seems bothered by my complete lack of medical background and cardiological interest.

Yet, what exactly I am doing remains a mystery. He has mentioned a desire to teach me cardiological terms so I can help him next month as he prepares a journal publication. I follow along, baffled, bemused, and, today, slightly irritated that what I thought was a casual meeting in his office turned into a four hour trip to an operating room. Had I known I would be theoretically assisting heart surgery, or actually assisting computer surgery, I probably would have at least worn better shoes.