1 down...2 down..

(dried squid over coals)

Just knocked off my Metabolism exam, have Virology/Immunology today followed by Anatomy and Physiology on Monday. Not feeling at all jet lagged at the moment and seem to be free of Ho Chi Minh's revenge, so far so good.


Dodged the big viro-immuno-exam-shaped bullet. Just a bit of studying this weekend and then I can relax by... starting new classes. Actually, that isn't so bad. This term is known as being relatively easier than the last, and the courses sound interesting: neuroanatomy, microbiology, biostatistics, and something else.

back to work and then back to play.

"The code was a quote on Armed Forces Radio: the comment that the temperature is rising, followed by eight bars of White Christmas"

Never come to asia without an exit strategy. Mine is Korea Air Flight 14-something to Seoul. If all goes well it will carry my 4 hours to South Korea where I will catch an even larger bird to Washington Dulles. Amazingly, and there are those who will say I am a liar, the flight only takes 50 minutes from Seoul to DC. I take off at 10:00am and arrive at 10:50am on the same day. The only reasonable explanation is that Korea is actually located somewhere in the vicinity of New Jersey...


During the 30 minute bus ride to the airport I was beginning to digest the experiences of this trip. I scrubbed in on my first case,
put in my first few stitches, saw a toe become a finger, a rib become an ear, ate a cobra, and met a guy who can claim 1/2000th of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. I discovered that I really enjoy working with children, especially when you get to put them to sleep if they start crying. I ate more beautiful soup in 10 days than I have in the past 10 years, the same goes for quail eggs, chicken feet, snails, river crab, cuttle fish, octopus, and snake penis vodka, and ant larva liquor. I ate the best croissants I've ever tasted, and drank dozens of tiny opaque black coffees with condensed milk. I expanded my Vietnamese vocabulary from 0 to about 15 words. i can say hello/goodbye, thank you, chicken, beef, good, bad, one, doctor, soup.... ok maybe that's 10 words but not bad for a tonal language. Probably most importantly, I have a renewed sense for why I am in medical school. I think this journey has created enough momentum to get me through the rest of the, what has been frankly boring, first year.

Projects on the Vermont horizon:

more beer classes (Belgians coming up), bottling my California red ale, a Schweitzer fellowship involving bread baking, some research, some sculpting, some more exams and then the last summer vacation i will have until i retire.

Gahhhhhh my brain is melting!!!

Studying is going well; I'm about 30 lectures and 10 vietnamese coffees in and still moving. I've been sitting in the same hyper-fluorescently lit room, listening to the the same 30 songs on repeat (no Pandora outside US!) for the past 25/30 hours. The info is actually returning quite quickly, but I'm starting to feel like I need to keep my head tilted back so that liquid brain won't drip onto my illegibly scrawled notebooks. As a quick break, here are more shots from Ha Long.

"the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world"

I have just returned from a 2 day study jaunt using the deck of a motorized Junk as a floating desk in the Ha Long bay. Easily the most beautiful setting in which I have ever memorized virology. Not much to report. Beauty of the scenery tempered by the missing of people and anxiety over upcoming examinations. Great place to reflect though. It was a last minute decision to go (sudden streak of sun weather) so I apologize for going AWOL. To make up for it I have been shopping vigorously for gifts, with some success I believe.

Ta-dah

 
 
 
 

that's kind of pretty much a miracle

a taste

 
 
 
 

Pretty feets and bloodsuckers

So i'm sitting on a computer in the suprisingly pleasant library of the national pediatrics hospital, avoiding a conference by the doctors on the trip. That's not to say that the presentations aren't interesting (slide 3: Chainsaw + face = bad), but i'm about to duck out to go eat snake with the team anesthesiologist.

the title of this post is a reference to the broken english introduction given to the conference audience about "giving children pretty faces, hands, and feets." Bloodsuckers is a nod to the leeches that we've been putting on the new finger of the boy operated on last night, to increase blood flow through the digit. Apparently in the US, all one needs to do to procure leeches is call 1-800-LEECHES (I'm not joking) and "medical grade" leeches will be overnighted to any hospital in the contiguous 48 states by a company called 'USA Leeches'. The vietnamese equivalent of this service is to draw a picture of a leech and tell the family of the patient to find a jar-full before their loved one's finger falls off. Sure enough 10 hours later a jar of wild pond parasites was sitting in the SICU.

follow-up:

Other news is that I ate 1/2 of a cobra, but the details will have to wait for tomorrow's update...

fill in the blanks

sorry about the sketchiness of the last post but the past few days have been a blur and the internet is a bit spotty. I spent last night in the hospital attending a brand new 'finger' that 17 hours before had been the 2nd toe of a kid with his 4 long fingers squished off by a big metal box years ago. The surgery ran from 9am to about 1 am and by the end of it both the US and Vietnamese teams were sitting on the OR floor giggling with exhaustion against a backdrop of anesthesia equipment blips and 80's love songs from an old boom box. The finger looks good but the outcome is still up in the air so, who knows.

many stories of oddities and niceties and some good food. the parents (and grandparents and great grandparents....) and patients are so so touching here. They sleep in the hospital on beds or bamboo mats next to the child's bed. Hospital care here is literally home care but with physician oversight. The families and staff are so attentive to their children and so appreciative to have help that it's incredibly refreshing to be here and the hospital doesn't really feel like a 'foreign' place.

I have several hundred pictures on the way and am writing down my days so I promise to get the stories from here to there but it will have to wait until I can relate them face to face as this typing is tiring and insufficient anyway. I miss many people right now, but not many things at this point. Still excited to be here.
more pics soon.

g

Bia Ha Noi

Things Eaten so far:

snails
big SNAILs
kidney
liver
pig's feet (pictured)
intestine
squid jerkey
charcoal grilled clams
mussels
quail eggs (some feathers)
tiny fried river crabs
octopus

things witnessed:

1 traffic accident
1 toe to hand transfer microsurgery
1 total ear reconstruction
10,000,000,000 motor bikes

Compadres:
2 nurses
1 resident
2 young folks
1 Colonel
1 madman
1 first US Hand transplant surgeon
Khan Vy etc.