Clinic Day 2 (7/25) || Danny Huynh

At the earliest crack of dawn, I felt my phone vibrating. It was 5 am. It was time to get ready for the second clinic day. I opted to skip breakfast today to get some extra rest for the busy day ahead of us and also to get ready. Afterwards, I headed down to meet everybody else downstairs and board our bus at the 6am call time. Since our journey from the hotel to Cau Ngang would take around 45 minutes, I made the executive decision to take a power nap to really stock up on energy before the day really began.

Once we arrived at the clinic, we had a quick debrief before we split up to our assigned roles. I was assigned to EKG, and to be completely honest, I was a little nervous since I wasn’t really confident on the exact positionings of all the leads and I remembered it taking me a while to attach all of them on training day. Luckily though, before the clinic started, the EKG team had a quick debrief and review of the process with Kevin before we started seeing patients. With the help of Bill, we had our first patient who graciously offered up his chest so that we could get some real practice in. Working alongside me in the EKG team was Sophie and Siana who were great. When Bill said that the sun from the window was scorching him on the table, Siana quickly came up with a solution. By taking some cloth laying around, we were able to make some makeshift curtains to block out the sun.

Before long, real patients began trickling in. As we saw our first patient, an elderly woman, the room seemed to grow quietly. She walked in slowly and seemed a little hesitant since she wasn't exactly sure what we were doing and what to expect. We welcomed her warmly and showed her to the exam table. I began trying my best to explain everything to her in Vietnamese as the three worked together to attach all the electrodes. As Siana hit “print” on the machine, our first patient’s EKG was complete. As our patient began to leave, she gave us a small, grateful smile and a “Cảm ơn con”

As the day went on, and as we saw more patients, I slowly became more and more confident, which allowed me to move faster from patient to patient. Good thing too, because as the day progressed, the pace picked up quickly. A line quickly began to form and patients quickly entered and left our little storage room. I greeted each patient warmly and checked their paperwork, explaining the procedure as clearly as I could, while Sophie and Siana worked in sync to attach the leads. Even by the afternoon, the line still didn’t die down that much, but at that point we were in the groove and everything came natural to us.

As the second clinic day came to a close, we all let out a collective sigh of relief and accomplishment. We all started to clean up and pack up what was once our little lively storage room. Once everything was stowed and the last patients had left, we piled onto the bus for the ride back. After a whole day in our little storage room, the blast of cold air from the bus felt absolutely amazing. The cold air felt like a cold wave that knocked me out completely and before I knew it, we were back at the hotel.

After a long day of work, we had the chance to celebrate our efforts through our banquets. Here we recognized all our 16G volunteers and providers as well as all our partner organizations. We also thanked our super amazing BOD this year and welcomed in the one for the upcoming term. We danced the night away (some people were grooving for real) and sang like there’s no tomorrow. The interactions I had today with the patients, providers, as well as my fellow Memo volunteers were something that will always stick with me and that made the trip that much more enjoyable.

Sophie and Siana printing out our first EKG!

Danny and Sophie placing EKG electrodes on patient

Clinic Day 2 all set up and set in motion!