Nothing is Impossible

Prosthetics are usually made to be custom fitted to each individual to fit their individual stump perfectly. When on a trip of this nature that such concept becomes unfeasible. That is why Dr. Vo invented his universal prosthetic that is made to be different sizes to fit a variety of patients. Although we have the advantage of using these prosthetics, we are still not prepared for everything, as we found out.

Yesterday our first patient was an above knee amputee, meaning that he did not have a knee joint. Luckily we had one above knee prosthetic left to use on him. These prosthetics are notoriously harder to fit because of the joint and the spring that is attached to make the knee move. We did finally get him fitted, but it was difficult because when he walked the knee would hyperextend making normal walking difficult. Also, just as he was about to leave the foot, which was already attached to the pylon fell off due to a weak bolt. Despite all of our difficulties he left with a huge smile on his face, and a much lighter and better working leg.

The happy patient walking, you can see the hyperextension of the knee.

The team!

As if we thought we had done our most difficult case yesterday, today was a different story. Our first, and only, prosthetic patient was a lady who came limping in on what looked like a tin can. She took her "prosthetic" off to reveal a stump that ended up being 13 inches long (the average stump we can easily fit is 6-8 inches). Instead of being a below the knee amputee like we usually treat she had what we call an ankle disarticulation, or her leg cut off right above the ankle. When we first saw what we had to work with we were all worried that we would not be able to successfully fit her. But this is where the idea that nothing is impossible comes in. Almost immediately we went to work and the engineering side of us kicked in. Half of the team worked on modifying two sockets to combine them to make one much longer socket while the other half worked on cutting a plastic foot down so that we could fit it directly on the socket without a pylon. In the end it took us 6 hours but we finally fit her! She was so happy and she said that we had changed her life, which we certainly had. Although her prosthetic was slightly too long, she was already walking much better than she was when we first saw her, which, in case like hers, was the best we could hope for.

Our first look at the stump...

Khalid and Jerod looking for the two perfect sockets to redesign into one longer one.

Wrapping the stump. We had to use a lot of cast padding and ace bandages because her stump was so skinny.

The first test run.

Finally finished!

Feet and heads, feet and heads...

This past week in Vietnam has been nothing short of amazing! We successfully completed our first week of work on prosthetics and in the clinic. We spent time exploring Can Tho. We stayed in the Vietnamese version of Hawaii. We ate some really good food, as well as some really not so good food.

Work was so much fun! I was in the clinic all week, and I have to say we all got so good at diagnosing patients. If that isn't impressive enough, we did it all speaking Vietnamese! Although sometimes it was helpful to have a translator nearby, most of time time we could figure out what was wrong with our patient just by touch and gesturing, which I found to be very cool. The work on the prosthetics was also very successful. We fitted about 30 patients, all of whom were very happy to have new legs. All of the Vietnamese people are very appreciative and are so grateful that we are there helping them.

The clinic where we worked every day. It was pretty small, but we were able to fit two beds in there, and it was the only semi-air conditioned station where we worked! The prosthetic group worked just outside that window.

Courtney and I taking a break from clinic duties.

Our last night in Can Tho was nothing short of interesting! We decided to take a moto-taxi ride around the city. These taxis are apparently illegal, which is the only thing close to transportation laws that I have come across while in Vietnam. The ride was so much fun and we felt like real Vietnamese people! We stopped at a Karaoke bar, which are almost as common in Vietnam as Waffle House in Georgia. It was the funniest thing, they let you rent out a room for as long as you want and sit on the couches and sing karaoke. The did have American songs, and there was quite an extensive variety, everything from the Beatles to Barney.

After we had satisfied our karaoke fever we go lost in a strange Vietnamese alley, and this picture only happened to look staged:

haha, not. We totally knew where we were going...

On Friday and Saturday we spent our time at a resort in the Vietnamese version of Hawaii, Phu Quoc. It was so nice, and the beach was amazing! It was hard to believe I was standing with my feet in the water on a beach in Vietnam. Wow.

View when we got off the boat.

Practicing my surfing on the bed in the hotel room.

The beach, amazing!

Crossing a sketchy bridge, we made it.

The best cheeseburger in the world! Which leads me to mention the food. The Vietnamese food is so good! I have enjoyed pretty much every meal, and instead of dessert, they give you fruit, how awesome! My favorite exotic fruit is Dragon Fruit. Pink waxy outside, albino kiwi inside, so cool! Unfortunately though sometimes you get unlucky with the food, which leads me to my next point: feet and heads.

Like i said, overall when we would go out the food has been way better than I expected, except in situations like this:

Yes, a chicken head, and I'll leave it at that.

Vietnam!!

Finally we have made it to Vietnam! After two weeks of classes and 26 hours of traveling it seemed like we would never get here. The first day we toured Ho Chi Mihn City and visited the Chu Chi Tunnels.

Ho Chi Mihn City was amazing, just like any capital city should be. But it was amazing for different reasons than maybe originally expected. First of all, the traffic laws, or lack there of, are insane. Moped is the primary mode of transportation in the city, and I think you need to be either fearless or totally crazy to ride one of those things. The people fly through the city and barely look to see where they are going or where they are turning. We did learn that about 11,000 people die each year in the city from moped accidents, so maybe some traffic laws would be a good thing to look into...

And you though crossing the street in Atlanta was tough.

View of Ho Chi Mihn City from the hotel.

Hopefully they never need to fix the power or the telephone lines, because their power lines were a terrible mess, but make a very interesting picture.

The Cu Chi Tunnels were another stop on the tour, and this ended up being a very very cool stop indeed (and by cool, I am most definitely NOT referring to the temperature) The tunnels were used by the Viet Kong during the Vietnam war in order to fight the American army, and I have to admit they were amazing. They dug, by hand mind you, the most elaborate tunnel system I have ever seen. The Viet Kong used this system of underground tunnels to travel and live where the American army would not be able to find them. It was amazing to see how extensive these tunnels were, and they were dug by hand, using no power tools what so ever. Crazy! They even cooked down there, and engineered a system so that the smoke from the kitchens would not rise directly above where they were living underground so the Americans could not use the smoke to target the tunnels during bombings. They also made these amazing ground traps for American soldiers that looked strikingly similar to many traps used in today's Saw movies. Complete with spikes and rotating levers, I would not want to step on any of these gruesome looking traps.

And now we know where they got the ideas for the Saw movies.

And of course we had to buy awesome Vietnamese straw hats. Now we're official!

Last Day of Classes

Today was our last day together before we head off for Vietnam. The day started, again in our wonderful blue scrubs, with Dr. Vo showing us how to suture. We probably won't be doing any of this in Vietnam but we might have to assist one of the doctors if they need to do any sort of surgery while we're over there. We also got a bonus self-defense lesson from Dr. Vo. We are totally going to be ready for those sketchy Vietnam streets!

Next on the agenda was packing all of the prosthetics, medications, and anything else we will need while we are over there. There are 100 sockets, 100 feet and pylons, not to mention all of the medications, so packing was not an easy task. We were able to split everything up between the 15 or so of us, and amazingly we got everything to fit.

Here everyone is busy counting and packing everything in their bags, we are going to have a lot to cary through the airports.

A line of legs. I think we should pimp them out while were on the airplane.

The next time we will see each other will be 6:30 am on June 3rd. Our flight leaves from Atlanta at 9:00 in the morning. Then we will land in Chicago, and head out to Hong Kong, then finally to Vietnam. We have 26+ hours of traveling a head of us, but we are all excited and ready to get started in Vietnam.

SCRUBS!

Today was scrub day in Dr. Vo's class. The task for today was to learn how to give injections, which I would have to say we all did pretty good at. First we practiced on chicken, yes chicken, that was interesting to say the least. When we thought we were proficient enough at pumping the chicken full of expired medication we turned the needle on ourselves. Dr. Vo was brave enough to go first and let one of us practice on him. Kevin was the lucky participant, and I think he did pretty well. Dr. Vo still had full use of his arm, so I guess that constitutes a success.

I think we all looked pretty official in our scrubs.

I left with two shots of vitamin B12 and successfully gave one, so I'm feeling pretty good right about now.

We also learned some more Vietnamese, and I'll tell you, this is going to be the hardest thing I have ever done. We need to speak Vietnamese fairly fluently, at least from a medical perspective, while we are performing orthopedic tests on the patients. Doing only one of these at a time seems pretty daunting, but combining the two, woah. Rough. I will be spending my weekend learning Vietnamese.

After class we all went to the gym and played basketball, yes we're ballin' Vietnamese doctors, awesome.

Chao bac. <- Vietnamese (YES)

Woah, a blog!!

Alright folks. It is Thursday May 20th, 2010 at 12:35 pm, I am waiting for Dr. Vo's class to start at 1:30 and I have decided to make a blog about our trip to Vietnam. Crazy.

For those of you who are unaware, a group of Mercer students, led by Dr. Vo and Dr. McMahan, are going to be spending three weeks in Vietnam to fit some of the locals with prosthetics. We will be using Dr. Vo's universal socket prosthetic that he invented, and that they are manufacturing right here at Mercer.

Should be an awesome trip. But right now things are a little slow. Class from 9-12 and then again from 1:30-4:30 can get a little monotonous, but hey, we are basically becoming doctors in two weeks. EEK. Since our classes start a week before regular summer classes at Mercer there is basically no food on campus. For example for lunch today I bought not one, but two Chic-fil-a chicken biscuits, a bag of Doritos, and a yogurt. Basically every food vendor within 10 minutes of campus closes at 3pm, so finding dinner is always tricky.

My frustration with Mercer's lack of good food is displayed in this wonderful picture:

Yes, that is two packs of Chic-fil-a sauce (you never know when it will come in handy), two bags of popcorn (retrieved from the SEB vending machine, both expired in March), two bags of miscellaneous food items, and of course my trusty Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Yep. Food's rough. Thanks Macon.