I’ve been called on as a physician on board airline flights three distinct times: once for a cardiac arrest in which I was performing CPR by myself on an elderly gentleman on the floor of the plane’s galley as it landed, a second time to evaluate a nearly-hysterical woman who was increasingly fearful that she was going blind during the flight, and a third time on an American Airlines flight from Honolulu to Chicago.

Approximately twenty four hours prior to this last medical emergency in the air, I had left Hong Kong after opening the art exhibition d’Asie d’Afrique at Museum 63.

The woman, in seat 39G, was experiencing increasing difficulty seeing clearly and complained that her vision was collapsing to a tunnel-like view. She also complained that she was losing sensation in her extremities, accompanied by a headache and abdominal pain. Her husband became increasingly concerned that she was progressively getting weaker and less responsive. The chief purser put out a call for doctors on board, and I rose to lend aid to the patient. Another physician, in Bermuda shorts and a bright blue Margaritaville t-shirt, and me, in camouflage shorts, flip-flops, and a black Triple 5 Soul hoodie, appeared as unlikely attendants to this patient. After a focused history-taking, physical exam and discussing differential diagnoses, our assessment was that she was most likely symptomatic due to dehydration and electrolyte imbalance secondary to gastroenteritis and diarrhea. It was found that these symptoms afflicted several other passengers on their Hawaiian holiday boat cruise. Although her initial low blood pressure and obtunded state improved after oral rehydration, our joint medical decision was to divert the flight to San Francisco to deplane and stabilize the patient with more definitive care in proper health facilities on the ground. An ambulance team greeted us upon a prioritized landing, and she was expected to quickly and fully respond to intravenous rehydration and electrolyte replacement

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Kóan Jeff Baysa is a contemporary art collector, curator, designer, writer, critic, physician, Whitney Museum Independent Study Program – Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow, and a member of AICA, the association of international art critics.

On the boards of The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School University, Art Omi International Artist Colony, the Asian American Art Centre, and The Center for Photography at Woodstock, he has presented lectures at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA in New York, MMVR in California (organizing committee member), and is on the advisory panels for the Chelsea Art Museum in New York and the Streaming Museum, a cybersite with public exhibition spaces on all seven continents.

He is a member of the Fragrance Advisory Board, and a consultant to and associate of The Daily Brand, a multi-disciplinary communications agency based in Los Angeles headed by Colin Mangham, a fellow founding member of MOCA China. The critic-in residence for the 2006 Art Omi International Artist Colony in Ghent, New York, he received a Ford Foundation grant to lecture on contemporary curatorial practice at the Hanoi University of Culture in Vietnam and conducted a survey of contemporary art in south and north Vietnam. In March 2009, he presented lectures and conducted workshops on the curatorial process from his unique perspective as a physician, at Zayed University campuses in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.