Life in Qatar
How Two UNE COM Alumni
Reconnected on the Opposite Side of the World
In the Air Force, there is a common saying when someone is leaving a base, unit, training, etc. “It’s a small Air Force”. This saying is thrown around so often, it’s basically the “I’ll see you later” of the Air Force. Which is an odd saying for a branch of service that has more than 300,000 active members and another 200,000 members between the Reserves and National
Guard. Yet, this past April, I, Dr. Matthew Ballew, D.O. '20
and Dr. Jane Suh, D.O., '21 found out how small the
Air Force can be.
In March of 2025, I was tasked with deployment to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, arriving a month later. The out-going family doc informed me that he would be working with an ER physician during his deployment, named Dr. Suh. “The first thought I had was ‘there has to be more than one Dr. Suh in the Air Force. How crazy would it be if it were Jane’”. Well, crazy enough, it was Jane! We worked in the hybrid clinic/ER/inpatient ward in Qatar with a handful of other providers, nurses, and EMT technicians. What’s unique about the military in a deployed setting is the ability to branch out from what is familiar and practice outside “the norm” for your career field. Though her training is in Emergency Medicine, Jane is also operated as primary care and a hospitalist while deployed. Matt, who was assigned to an outpatient clinic at Keesler, got his reps with urgent care/ER type patients.
We first met in 2017 during UNECOM Orientation,
where she was an incoming first year and I was a
second-year orientation lead. We initially bonded over
both hailing from Maryland, but due to differences in
schedule and class year, didn’t interact much other than passing conversations.
I went on to complete my clinical rotations in Reading, Pennsylvania, then
Family Medicine residency at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Northern Virginia.