In need of advice!

[SLC Flyfishing]

That looks fantastic. I especially love the sunset (and am quite jealous) . When will you be in at the deep end work wise?

Well we arrived in Morotai this morning (or this evening, depending on where in the world you are I suppose). This is our first of three stops in Indonesia for seeing patients. Following that we'll head to Darwin, Australia for another crew change, and about a week of leave, then it's on to East Timor for another month or so of patient care. So I guess you might say that we just arrived at one of the deep sections work wise.

SLC

 

[dmr727]

Really cool, SLC. Thanks for keeping us in the loop!

 

[4JNA]

good choice.

cool dude. great decision/experience/opportunity. see the world and help people who need help (no insurance card required).

i spent several years on active duty doing the same type of thing. my wife and sister also took a year off after college before going to med school to do something similar. my wife's' younger brother did not do anything like this and went through 3 attempts at getting into med school before getting accepted at brown.

might have been the real world experience for them, or it might just be him as he's a bit odd.

 

[annk]

Very cool. Hope you have a great experience!

 

[SLC Flyfishing]

Arrived in Ternate, Indonesia on Sunday. Much larger city, much wealthier people (relatively speaking), and many more of them to treat.

I saw a little boy on Sunday night that was on the ship to get a cleft lip repaired. I work in Primary care, so our job is to respond when the surgery screening team finds anyone with a fever, and make sure they don't have something infectious like Influenza etc. That could be disastrous to our ability to care for patients, if Influenza were spreading through the crew. The little boy we saw was about 3 years old, and he had a fever of 101 F, lot's of nasal discharge, and the beginnings of a middle ear infection. You could tell that he didn't feel well at all. Unfortunately, his infection will probably mean that he can't have surgery as the Anesthesiologists are very reluctant to anesthetize anyone with an elevated temp. This may be the child's only chance to get this procedure done, since we do everything for free, and his parent's have obviously not been able to pay for the surgery themselves. Hopefully he can get better soon, and still have a shot at the surgery, we're in this port for about 1.5 weeks.

I also went on Liberty in Ternate yesterday, it's a heavily Muslim town which at first had me a little nervous, but the people were extremely friendly here. I toured some of the old Portuguese fortresses from as early as 1510, went snorkeling on a beautiful coral reef, and shopped in a local spice market. It was a wonderful day, and it was certainly nice to leave the confines of the ship.

This has been a really neat experience so far, can't wait to get to the next port, there will be some portuguese speakers there so I will be able to communicate.

SLC