Wrapping Up

Last Fun British Word of the Day: Cheerio-goodbye, fitting for one of my last posts

The last few days have been a whirlwind. I leave Friday morning and have only one day left here on the Island. There were a few loose ends and experiences that I had to jam in this week so things have been pretty hectic. I could write pages and pages but I'll try to keep it short. Stay tuned for some sort of conclusive wrap-up that I hope to put up tomorrow, but more likely after my return.

On Monday I went with the Outreach Bus and nurses to screen people in deprived wards and offer health counseling. The bus is the spearhead of the health inequalities project that I incorporated into my comparison of US and UK cardiovascular disease prevention that I also completed on Monday (still can't figure out how to post documents). The nurses let me do the screens and counseling since the testing was very basic and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to people about their lives. I'm not sure if I persuaded anyone to change their lifestyle but at least I got them thinking about the consequences of not doing so.

On Tuesday I presented my paper on cancer deaths to the Prison Operations and Modernis(should be a z)ation board. They were really receptive and my presentation went surprisingly well. I found a lot of interesting trends in the treatment of the 20 gentlemen I reviewed and I think the board was very interested in my suggestions. I'm returning tomorrow in the morning to tour the facilities, meet a few prisoners, and speak one-on-one with the director of prison health care to talk more on my work.

After work on Tuesday the entire public health office and some of the commissioners came out to send me off. We went to a rooftop bar in Newport and had a few drinks. Again, another great time with the Brits who definitely know how to party. After talking about the problem of obesity on the Island for nearly 30 minutes we ran down to Hong Kong Express and gorged ourselves on greasy Chinese food. I met the son of one of the executive directors who brews his own beer and offered to take me to a few pubs to sample the Island's locally made beer. Thus how my intended 8pm return to my room ended up getting pushed back a few hours. The beer, however, was absolutely amazing and well worth the missed sleep.

The guy--who I wish I would have met earlier in my stay here--looked up at me after his 4th pint and said..."Kris, do you want to drive a tank tomorrow?" Apparently his friend owns the military history museum and some 50 odd WWI and II tanks that they like to drive around and fire off blanks. I must admit I didn't believe him until he showed up today and took me, in my shirt and tie, to the "battlefield" north of the hospital. I'm not sure I can put justice in words to what seeing someone drive a tank is like. Very cramped, hot, dusty, and excessive...but absolutely thrilling. They pulled some hairpin turns, climbed 20 ft dirt piles, and other likely unsafe movements and had a great time this afternoon. Tonight he (Ed) and his mother Theresa are taking me to "find" some hops to take back to the States and, if I can get them through customs, I'll try and brew some proper British beer for all of us. I'm not sure what "find" means and, like Dr Bingham's flint hunting, he refuses to explain it to me in advance. Finding amusement at my ignorance seems to be a common theme here.

Also, and I'll stop after this, I shadowed Dr Thomson, a general practitioner this morning. The NHS is more bottom heavy in terms of the distribution and responsibilities given to primary physicians so I'm glad I had the chance to see the vital role they play in gate-keeping for the system. My hands are hurting so I'll try and sum up the differences between what I saw today and our community weeks in my final post. I met a man who had a CABG (bypass-DAD) 30 years ago which makes him certainly one of the longer survivors and amazing. Shannon let me know that Michale Debakey passed away a few days ago (http://www.charlotte.com/local/story/710829.html ). He was the father of modern heart surgery and actually trained Shannon's grandfather who was also a surgeon. The article says that he performed surgery until he was 90 years old which is crazy. Anyways, a good read.

Hope everyone is doing well. Wish me luck on my return flight.