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.