Pulling People out of People on the Axis of Evil: Arabian Adventures of a High-Risk Obstetrician and Lessons Learned

By Bernd Schumacher M.D.

Bernd Schumacher, M.D., who grew up in Germany and worked as a medical doctor in the Middle East and the United States of America, looks back at the highs, lows, and the lessons he learned while living an exciting, international life in this autobiography.
As a boy, he grew up with a fascination with the American dream, decorating his room with the American flag, models of an Apollo Rocket and the lunar lander. His wallpaper featured the Manhattan Skyline, with the Twin Towers still intact, of course.
After immigrating to the United States, he met his future wife, and they enrolled at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine in Maywood, Illinois, in 1986. After medical school, it was on to residency, with some time spent collecting model trains along the way.
In 2000, he moved to Saudi Arabia, and there his working hours were much more regulated. He had lots of household help, including a gardener and a woman to help with the children and the household.
The author’s experiences have taught him to empathize with the plight of others. In recalling his life, he argues that the global village concept is inevitable but that we must strive to preserve local cultures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532058738

Bernd Schumacher M.D.

Bernd Schumacher, M.D., grew up in Cologne, Germany, and immigrated to the United States of America in 1982. He left Germany with the equivalent of an associate’s degree in foreign languages and humanities. After undergraduate studies in chemistry and biology, he graduated from medical school in Chicago in 1990. He went on to practice medicine in the Middle East for thirteen years, returning to the United States in 2013. He’s retired.

Book preview

Pulling People Out of People on the Axis of Evil

Arabian Adventures of a High-Risk Obstetrician and Lessons Learned

BERND SCHUMACHER, MD

PULLING PEOPLE OUT OF PEOPLE ON THE AXIS OF EVIL

ARABIAN ADVENTURES OF A HIGH-RISK OBSTETRICIAN AND LESSONS LEARNED

Copyright © 2018 Bernd Schumacher, MD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-5872-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-5873-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018911508

iUniverse rev. date: 09/27/2018

22155.png

Contents

Part I Germany (1963 – 1982)

Chapter 1 – 1963 – 1973 – Growing up in Germany and Grade School Years

Chapter 2 – 1973 – 1982 High School Years, Grades 5 through 13

Chapter 3 – My American Dream

Part II America (1982 – 2000)

Chapter 4 – 1982 – 1986 – Emigration to the USA and College Years

Chapter 5 – 1986 – 1990 Time in Medical School

Chapter 6 – Residency, 1990 – 1994

Chapter 7 – Model Trains April 1992 till present

Chapter 8 – Mental Illness, fall of 1992 till present

Chapter 9 – Maternal-Fetal Medicine Fellowship in Houston 1994 – 1996

Chapter 10 – Private Practice in Houston, Texas

Chapter 11 – 1999 - The call of the Orient

Chapter 12 – April 2000 Moving to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Part III Saudi Arabia (2000 – 2013) – Life in the Kingdom

Chapter 13 – An Expatriate Family in Dhahran on the Arabian/Persian Gulf

Chapter 14 – Working for the Saudi Aramco Medical Services Organization

Chapter 15 – Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Orient

Chapter 16 – Elective Abortion and reproductive technology

Chapter 17 – Ethical perspective on human reproduction

Chapter 18 – Close encounters of the Saudi Government Kind

Chapter 19 – Learning the Arabic Language (2000 – 2013)

Chapter 20 – Censorship

Chapter 21 – Censorship – Public Entertainment

Chapter 22 – Interracial and interreligious marriages in KSA

Chapter 23 – September 11th, 2001; a night-on-call I shall never forget – a black swan

Chapter 24 – Newborn twins in Saudi Arabia, October 10th, 2001, unforgettable night-on-call

Chapter 25 – Parenting in Saudi Arabia

Chapter 26 – Schools at Saudi Aramco

Chapter 27 – Modern Day Slavery – when does it end?

Chapter 28 – Saudi Women, Saudi patients

Chapter 29 – Living as expatriate wife and mother in Saudi Arabia, plus other family topics

Chapter 30 – Islam versus Christianity – a comparison, plus a discussion of Muslim culture

Chapter 31 – Sharia Law, the Saudi Arab Legal System

Chapter 32 – From the tent to the high-rise – Saudi Arabia is a young nation

Chapter 33 – Expatriate Loyalty and Commitment and their Boundaries

Chapter 34 – 2002: The second Iraq war

Chapter 35 – Vacation travel while living in KSA

Chapter 36 – Dubai, Bali and Port Douglas, our favorite vacation destinations

Chapter 37 – The Indian Ocean Tsunami 2004

Chapter 38 – Three weeks at Disneyworld and Universal Studios in 2008

Chapter 39 – How we met artist Greg Burns and his wife Angie in the Maldives 2010

Chapter 40 – Period of relative stability (2005 – 2010)

Chapter 41 – Royal Summer Assignment 2011

Chapter 42 – SCUBA diving is a great family hobby – Bora Bora 2011

Chapter 43 – Muslim Fundamentalism on the Rise, 2012-2013

Chapter 44 – Deciding to leaving the Sandbox in 2013

Chapter 45 – Arabian Vignettes and English Language Variants

Part IV Saudi Arabia (2000 – 2013) – Extrapolating to the bigger East/West picture

Chapter 46 – Human Origins – the species and diverse insular cultures, East and West

Chapter 47 – Imperialism, Nationalism and Isolationism, East and West Comparison

Chapter 48 – Exploitation of the Work Force, East and West

Chapter 49 – Sex education and Taboos in East and West

Chapter 50 – Religion East and West

Chapter 51 – Whahabism

Chapter 52 – Human Rights East and West

Chapter 53 – Issues affecting East and West equally

Chapter 54 – How can East and West meet in the middle and get along?

Part V California

Chapter 55 – Back in the United States of America, July 2013

Chapter 56 – Raising Responsible Educated Young Americans

Chapter 57 – Amy Winehouse: a Meta-Analysis Five Years after her Death

Chapter 58 – Financial Planning

Chapter 59 – 2014/2015 Practicing maternal-fetal medicine in California and final retirement from medicine

Chapter 60 – American Healthcare: you only get a little for a whole lot

Chapter 61 – 2015 Re-inventing myself after Medicine

Part VI American Reality Check through the eyes of a cosmopolitan liberal progressive

Chapter 62 – Homelessness

Chapter 63 – Sex Offenders

Chapter 64 – Tattoos

Chapter 65 – Changing United States Demographics

Chapter 66 – Cultural mentality

Chapter 67 – American Conservatives

Chapter 68 – Fundamentalism

Chapter 69 – Ethnic Cleansing and Xenophobia

Chapter 70 – Islamophobia

Chapter 71 – Racism

Chapter 72 – Terrorism

Chapter 73 – Social Justice, basic needs met for all

Part VII Present and Future, 2018 and beyond

Chapter 74 – Guinness World Records z scale – done – now what?

Chapter 75 – Exercise and Weight Loss

Chapter 76 – All family members moving forward

Chapter 77 – Travels since returning to the United States – to Travel is to Live

Chapter 78 – Trump’s Presidency

Chapter 79 – Gun Control

Chapter 80 – Issues where the United States’ actions will impact the globe with its decisions

Chapter 81 - Overpopulation

Chapter 82 – How to lead a life in the 21st Century?

Chapter 83 – The Basics of Modern Society as it should be in the 21st Century

Chapter 84 – Marriage in Modern-Day Society vs being in serial monogamous relationships

Chapter 85 – My favorite Mantras, sayings, quotes and truism:

Chapter 86 – Who impacted my life and influenced me in writing this book

Part I

Germany (1963 – 1982)

Chapter 1 – 1963 – 1973 – Growing up in Germany and Grade School Years

BDPK0398.jpg

On April 24th, 1963, I was born in the Cologne suburb of Kalk. My childhood was uneventful. I loved to eat bananas with the peel still on, I had a penchant for drinking the liquid out of snow globes. My first beer I allegedly drank at the age of four. I liked watching people draw blood on me when having routine tests done. Until age six I only spoke the local German dialect of Cologne, called Koelsch. My pediatrician, Dr. Susan Remy, thought I was doing very well for myself.

Pre-school happened under the strict auspices of aunts Maria and Helen. For misbehaving I once got to spend time in the dark utility closet of the preschool. Santa Claus mostly gifted me black coal, which is a seriously bad sign. Starting at age six, my mom allowed me to play outside with my friends, just so long as I was back at the apartment by dinner time. My friends and I were not restricted as to where we played, and there really were not any problems.

I attended the Catholic Primary School in the Cologne suburb of Buchheim. My family and I moved into the ancestral home in the Cologne suburb of Muelheim when I was in second grade. My brother was born in 1968, just as I started primary school. Primary school was disciplined and included preparation for Holy Communion and Confirmation. Regular Catholic Religious Education Classes were held by the parish priest of St. Mauritius, the local parish, next door to the Catholic School.

All my grandparents survived World War II, three of my grand uncles, however, died during World War I, another one drowned while swimming in the River Rhine, and the last one was alive and well, after surviving several years in a Russian Prisoner-of-War camp. On the weekends, during the war, my maternal grandfather commuted sixty miles each way on bycyle from his Cologne workplace to Montabaur, the evacuation site for my maternal grandmother and my mother. My father was evacuated to the small town of Uckerrath as a child during the war.

Grade school was uneventful. I strongly repented after I was caught stealing an apple. I had to take it back to the salesman and apologize. I had several really good friends. I celebrated my first Communion, had a lot of Catholic guilt feelings in the process, but gradated grade school on time.

My mother’s formal education stopped after ninth grade. She has spent her life on self-study. My mom is well read and worked in the chemical industry as secretary. My father was the first academician in our family. He studied law, and practiced both as an attorney as well as civil court judge. My father was raised in the country side, in Uckerrath, during the war, he played the piano well and entertained the patrons of a local bar. At some point the bar he used to play in was hit by ordinance. Toward the end of the war, a young American and my father, shared a room. Many years later, this gentleman would provide food and lodging for me while I was visiting Naperville, Illinois, looking for a good college near Chicago.

My father was a perfectionist. He handled the unusual cases, like the gender questions of transsexuals. Also, he decided which baby names were legal in Germany. There are strict rules that cannot be violated. Finally, my father dealt with cases of insult and libel. My mom did a lot of typing at home to help my father out. Almost weekly a mechanic would come by the house and clean my mom’s IBM® typewriter.

My brother followed in my father’s footsteps and became an attorney himself. He is five years younger than me. He had no interest in moving abroad, at all.

Many of our family vacations took us to German cow, pig or sheep farms. Many farming families run affordable bed and breakfast services alongside their daily farm operations.

So we went to Bavaria, where, at one time, there happened to be a huge hail storm while we were there. It destroyed the roof of the bed and breakfast, the town called out the military to help rebuild.

Most often we went to one of the North Frisian Islands that all of us like: Pellworm. The Halligen or North Frisian Islands, are rough, cold, and surrounded by the brownish North Sea. There still is an austere beauty. Boat trips are plentiful. A retiree even runs a Baltic amber store. Amber is petrified tree sap that is about forty million years old. It can contain interesting artifacts, like insects, for example.

Fishing from Pellworm Island encompasses looking for tiny shrimp, called Krabben. Never longer than four centimeters, they make a great topping for a sandwich. Tourists also fish for eels; the water itself is usually chuck full of jellyfish. Sole can be found as well.

When we stayed at farmers’ homes, hospitality always ruled. During the evenings, the adults would chat (Kloensnak) by the fire, drinking hot coffee fortified with ninety proof rum.

New Year’s Day is strongly observed in Germany. On New Year’s Eve folks are able to fire off their own store-bought fireworks. My grandpa Barthel Westerfeld and I had a lot of fun on several New Year’s Eve celebrations with our own fire cracker collection. New Year’s good luck charms include the four-leaved clover, the chimney sweep and the pig. Often marzipan figurines of these motives can be bought around New Year’s Eve in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

My grandparents had been taught by two world wars what scarcity of food and supplies means. Many older Germans today still tend to be stingy, they hoard supplies, they are not able to let go! The current Generation Wealth assumes everything can be bought by anyone at any time. It is worthwhile to develop the ability to part with things that are no longer being used.

Chapter 2 – 1973 – 1982 High School Years, Grades 5 through 13

Hoelderlin Gymnasium (Nine-year Middle and High School) in Cologne’s old Muelheim suburb was my educational home for the following nine years. During the first year I twisted an ankle in the basement of the school, where I was definitely not supposed to hang out. The custodian’s family sold coke and potato chips. Otherwise it all went well. The last six years I spent at a temporary building – due to the Hoelderlin Gymnasium renovation – at Ebert Square in Downtown Cologne. I was nineteen years old when I graduated.

At that time I was going to be a geologist and collected rocks and minerals. Also, I was able to sample nudist beaches on a language vacation to France, and still find them intriguing today. One Muslim neighbor was also our seamstress; my father did not like her Turkish food at all.

Hoelderin Gymnasium’s strength is its focus on classics and linguistics. I took nine years of Latin and three years of Ancient Greek. I also took classes in German, English and French. English and French Classes were voluntarily supplemented by me at the English and French Institutes in Cologne, respectively.

Positive consequences from learning a foreign language abound: exposure to a new culture, communicating with new-found friends, learning grammar and sentence structure, figuring out how to paraphrase when your vocabulary is limited. The most important point of learning a foreign language is: learn the process of language acquisition so you can use it for many more languages in the future. Languages require on-the-spot composition of sentence structures. This is a way to get in touch with one’s inner artist self. Learning a language means being motivated and to practice. Creativity is increased because each sentence is different.

Also I took formal accordion lessons. In the end I should be picking up the accordion thirty five years later and end up playing at a German pub. Music and art appreciation help break down barriers between cultures.

My parents arranged a French language course for me near Bordeaux. I was to spend a month with a French speaking family. The family was wonderful. The husband had spent many years in the navy, we all ate well! We had red country wine with every meal. My French really improved during those four weeks.

I was also lucky enough to go on several English language trips to the East of England. These courses were very valuable to help make my English more fluent. Also, many excursions to important historical sites in England were offered.

As a final treat after learning ancient Greek for three years, we all traveled to Greece. The fifty-hour train ride was the easiest and cheapest way to get there. Water in showers was cold to discourage most students from using up too much. We stayed in a hotel that rented by the hour. While on this trip, all of sudden we heard of President Ronald Reagan’s attempted assassination.

Chapter 3 – My American Dream

CNHI4562.jpg

What exactly made me contemplate to leave Germany for America? The American Dream just fascinates me. Three generations prior to my arrival in the United States of America, Catholic priests, related to me, left for the USA. They ran a Catholic parish in Earlville, Illinois, a sleepy hamlet, near Chicago, with one white Catholic Church steeple. They went before me, and they are, perchance, buried in the little town of Naperville, Illinois, where I first landed as College Student and German immigrant in 1982.

The decoration of my room in Germany reflected my American dream: an American flag, models of an Apollo Rocket and a lunar module. Also there were models of the space shuttle and an American nuclear submarine. The wall paper consisted of the Manhattan Skyline, with the Twin Towers still present, of course. My grandfather and I had watched a show about Highway 1, the Trans American Highway. It goes from Alaska to Argentina.

First, my father said, I should learn how to speak fluent English. So I went to England to spend time with a British Family. This worked and I took several courses.

To spend time in America and improve my English further, I was very lucky that a good friend of my father’s from WWII agreed to identify US families that I could stay with for the summer. Several families took me in when I visited Naperville, Illinois, several times.

In addition, a distant relative in Sedona, Arizona hosted me several times. I learned about humming birds and ate my first oysters on the half-shelf and prime rib. My hosts took me on camping trips and water skiing. We caught huge fish, and howled with coyotes at the moon. I got to meet my first ever Mormon families. I found out what Western Saloons look like on the inside.

To prepare for college entrance in the United States, I had to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language. Also, I was examined by the German draft and found to be suitable for compulsory military service. Yet, German students who complete their studies in the United States, are deferred until they return to Germany to serve their compulsory eighteen months in the German Military.

My father was not at all happy with the prospect of me moving to America. His world would lose a young man that he could praise and show off everywhere!

Part II

America (1982 – 2000)

Chapter 4 – 1982 – 1986 – Emigration to the USA and College Years

On August 1st, 1982, at the tender age of nineteen, I left Cologne, Germany. Flying KLM, I was able to secure a one-way ticket to Chicago to attend North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Friends of my parents made sure I purchased a winter coat and boots.

During the second term at North Central College, I met the love of my life and future wife. As a matter of fact I was so excited to see her, that, when I met her for the first time, I talked to her in German instead of English.

A very decent professor from the North Central College Chemistry Department became my academic advisor. She helped me obtain a social security number and an Illinois State identification card. She would have students over for dinner frequently and show off her baked Alaska dessert specialty. But each student had to enter a comment in the guest book under her and her husband’s supervision.

My roommate was from from Neenah, Wisconsin. He was a basketball player, and we got along well. His parents took me out for Sunday brunch rather frequently. My roommate brought a lot of laundry from home, and he used some of my drawers in the dorm room, since I brought so little from Germany.

For me the enigma was the twin sheets, since I had no twin. Also the expression right off the bat was hard. I thought it was right of the bed. Every now and then, if we kept our dorm room unlocked on a Saturday night, someone mistook out chair for a urinal, as the dormitory bathroom was right next to our room.

Our dorm was mostly occupied by football players. Per hallway there was one phone and one communal bathroom. A saying by Post World War II German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was on the wall: we all live under the same sun, but many of us have different horizons altogether.

In winter I took a Shakespeare Class to cover my English requirement. It came with Shakespeare movies that my wife and I watched together on Wednesdays. That was very romantic.

Chicago has a lot of cultural events to offer. Over the years we attended a ballet and a couple of musicals. Also we were among the first to be in the tent with the then-new travelling French Canadian Circus Cirque Du Soleil. Formal dances were held on a boat permanently moored to Navy Peer. My wife and I had a very romantic Winter Term and became very close very fast. We knew we were destined for each other. Chicago has a couple of nice German Restaurant, some with weekend sing along. That kept my own cultural background alive.

My wife and I became engaged, our wedding was going to be on the Ides of March, i.e. March 15th, in the evening, at Saints Peter and Paul Church in Naperville, Illinois. The final song was selected to be America the Beautiful. We had a simple wedding on March 15th, 1985. My wife’s parents were present, my parents declined our invitation mostly based on cost reasons and work requirements. Many of our professors came to Saints Peter and Paul. The reception was held at my wife’s parents’ home.

A stag party before the wedding was a must. My roommate and associates did a wonderful job of hiring a stripper. She issued me a Smiles certificate which I still have in my possession to this day. As she became completely naked, she asked if we were offended by nudity. So we said of course, that is exactly why we hired you.

The administration of President Ronald Reagan had passed the Paperwork Reduction Act. This way I could go to the Dirkson Federal Building in Chicago with my credentials and be processed for a Green Card in one day. Our simple honeymoon was at the Lincolnshire, Illinois, Resort, and we spent a few nights at a hotel back in Naperville. The Green Card application followed, so now I was a permanent resident of the United States of America.

My brother visited us in Chicago in 1983. My parents arrived for college graduation in the early summer of 1986. They also caught up with their local friend, who had recommended North Central College to me. After visiting Chicago, my parents vacationed in Florida for a couple of weeks, together with my wife and me.

In college my music interest centered on Techno Pop, Kraftwerk from Duesseldorf, Germany, for example. Deep Purple was also one of my favorites. Later on I added the Rolling Stones and the heavy metal group, Rammstein, as well as Eisbrecher.

We took several trips to visit my folks in Cologne, Germany. Iceland Air offered inexpensive flights and great food. One year, though, we had to wait a couple of days for our flight. The airplane needed be fixed. Iceland Air was a small corporation at the time, so there was no replacement jet. In Reykjavik we usually bought sheep wool sweaters and single-malt Scotch. My father was concerned about my marital union with my new wife. He gave me a monthly stipend for four years. At the same time I signed that I would never ask for additional financial support. My inheritance had been paid out!

One year my mom bought us a trip for Christmas to go to the original Nuremberg Christ Child Market. Also, my wife and I had the opportunity to learn a little ballroom dancing. My brother was finishing his International Dance Needle Courses for Ballroom Dancing. These were official balls, so everyone had fun!

When first married, from 1985 till 1988, we continued to live on the lower level of a home in the woods. The rent was extremely affordable, so long as my wife cleaned house, and I did take care of any trees, that needed to be made into fire wood. Our medical school applications were accepted at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine. They were accepted independently from each other. The staff did not realize that we were married (for 33 years now, since March 15th, 1985).

Chapter 5 – 1986 – 1990 Time in Medical School

DEVU5352.jpg

In fall of 1986 my wife and I enrolled at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine in Maywood, Illinois. We were fortunate to both be accepted there at the same school. I had even signed up for the MD/PhD program, looking to be a future medical scientist. It took no time at all to drop the PhD in microbiology. I was not ready to add another four years to my education, before residency would even start. You start medical school thinking you are smart. Well, the other students are smarter. That is difficult to realize at first, but true!

Cadaver/Anatomy laboratory during the first semester is a smelly mess. It’s very hard to like a class like this. Examinations consisted of identifying small flagged anatomic structures, which was very difficult for me to do reliably, given the individually different looks of the bodies. Daily classes were lectures, in general, and my wife and I decided to attend virtually all of them.

Commuting from Naperville the first two years was hard. The highway narrows down to one lane before it enters the Eisenhower Express Way into Chicago. Here are rain, sleet and snow. The temperatures can be hot and humid as well as bone-chilling cold. Your car can ice up or get plowed in. Not much fun! We lost a lot of time on these commutes, at the very least one hour round trip. But we were able to remain in the quaint village of Naperville, Illinois, where we had spent our college years.

At the ranch-style home in the woods we occupied the basement, my wife cleaned house, and I took care of the forest and the yard. This resulted in a huge discount on the monthly rent, plus we did not have to pay for utilities. Much of my absolutely necessary dental work had been done at the Loyola Dental School, free of charge. Luckily, I met an endodontist while working in the woods. He was very kind, and in exchange for chopping wood for him, he completed six root canals for me that still needed to be done. He finished these very fast and at a huge discount! All in all, I had to have twenty-two