Doctor vividly recalls scenes from 9/11

Dr. Omar Bholat once hoped to start a private surgery practice, one with regular office hours and weekends off. But that was before 9/11.

"I was looking forward to a nice life, then 9/11 happened and poof," he said. Five days after the attack, Bholat headed for Ground Zero. He put on his scrubs, hoisted a medical bag over his shoulder and hitchhiked from Manhattan's Upper West Side to help set up triage at the site.

Gone were his plans to perform procedures such as gall bladder surgery. In their place was a commitment to emergency response medicine.

Today he is the point person at Bellevue Hospital Center's Trauma Unit, where he oversees disaster preparedness.

Bholat, 45, a father of three who now lives in Dix Hills, remembers the Ground Zero scene vividly: treating emergency first responders, construction workers and volunteers for chest pains and bone fractures.

He was on Chambers Street when he saw "five-ton Army vehicles and soldiers hopping out with M-16s over their backs in battle gear.

"It was unbelievable. A surreal experience. When have you ever seen, in Lower Manhattan, the Army roll up like that?"

He remembers "getting angrier and angrier," he said of his response to the attack on American soil. His anger reached the point that, he conceded, "I could have killed somebody."

The experience "gave me plenty of time to pause," he said. "I knew the war was coming and I wanted to be part of it."

So Bholat, who had been director of laparoscopic surgery at Metropolitan Hospital Center, enlisted in the Army Reserves.

But with the name Omar Shareef Bholat, he expected -- and received -- an extensive background check, one that lasted five months. His parents had immigrated in the 1950s -- his father was a Sunni Muslim from Myanmar and his mother had grown up in Germany, having survived the bombing of Munich during World War II.

Once he received clearance he was given the rank of captain and, in 2003, was sent to Iraq.

He joined a medical team that was part of a convoy transporting 33 tons of medical equipment to Balad. When they arrived, they unloaded the equipment and set up a modern emergency room, operating room and intensive care unit. He returned to Iraq for a second tour in 2008, in Mosul.

Six years ago, between tours, he was named to his current position, associate director of trauma at Bellevue, where he says providing emergency medical care is the easy part.

The real work, he said, is the evaluation and stabilization of patients: Each should take no longer than 15 minutes, he said, and they must be readied for a CT scan before they are transferred to other hospitals in order to make room for more patients.

"We can't plan for everything because you can't predict," he said, making reference to Japan's earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdown.

"You have to be flexible and adapt because the threat will change," he said. "I'm not on high alert. I'm just ready."