My Tho, Vietnam -- Michelle Springer, Webster Fellow My Tho is very nice, especially with our hotel right on the Mekong River. The people have been friendly and hospitable.
We operated on a young Cambodian woman who was burned by acid in "drive-by" incident; it was apparently a case of mistaken identity. The kids who did it were never identified or caught. The patient had severe contractures of her eyelids and neck, which we operated on. She is very grateful and recovering well. Her cousin speaks perfect English (he lived in Oakland, California for a while), and he is staying with her night and day. He has an interesting story: he was a gang member in California and now lives in Southeast Asia helping drug addicts. He says that his mother helped him realize that the life he was living in a gang was wrong.
Next week we have mostly clefts on the schedule, a mixture of lips and palates. We saw an unexpected number of virgin clefts during clinic. There are a couple of patients (one with a cleft palate and one with a neck burn contracture) who are going to meet me and the next Interplast team in Cao Lanh next week. We will prioritize them and make sure to fit them in the schedule.
Comments