We rode taxis to the hospital, and as with most locations we visit, we were met with curious gazes and comments. Our wonderful hosts helped us find our way through the maze of halls to the area we needed to set up.
Frankie, Wendell, and myself found ourselves working on set-up while the rest of the group went to the busy clinic. Thao, one of the nurses who will be helping with the cases, jumped right in and helped me get everything organized. She is a real self-started, clearly very bright, and was most helpful. It always amazes me how a fully functioning OR, processing unit, and recovery room can spring out of all these boxes. Not unlike a crystal garden - add water and it grows!
I had wanted to go to clinic earlier and help with screening, but I got lost in the maze of hospital halls as I tried to find my way over. Finally, with the help of Hien and Thao, I walked over to the clinic later in the day. It was held on a stage in a large seating hall of some kind, and the seating area was full of potential patients and their families. The usual buzz of Resurge was happening - various tables and medical workers screening and interviewing patients with interpreters and extra local help hard at work. The cases are put on a master schedule as post-its before things are finalized. This makes it easy to rearrange a day's cases to a more sensible flow. Our surgeon Bill told us a total of 152 patients were seen, 87 were accepted for final procedures and most of them made it through to get on the schedule. We will be doing about 11 cases per day.
At the end of the day, we went to the ward to see the patients for tomorrow. All the next day's patients will be admitted to the hospital the night before; a luxury we lost long ago in the U.S. They will also stay as long as needed after their procedures, so we will be able to follow them closely and make sure all is going well. Hien, our Vietnam anesthesiologist, instructed the patients about the timing of the last food and drink so that no one comes to surgery at risk of getting food in his or her lungs. I don't understand what she said, but she definitely made her point!
After everyone was packed up to head back to the hotel, four of us decided to walk. Marion had her handy phone GPS to guide us back. It was our first real look at the town we are working in. Not the density of traffic some other Vietnam cities have, but the same lovely, hard-working people.
And of course our equally lovely and hard-working Resurge workers: Elizabeth, Frankie (my roommate), and Marion.
We did get a bit lost, phone notwithstanding, because the building numbers had a way of going up or down in a kind of random way. We had to pass a crowd of children doing some variety of marshall arts. After our third time passing, they began to wave and shout "hallo". Kids are all programmed the same!
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