Just a little of this and that

It feels great to be home. So great, that I left my empty apartment within 30 minutes and took off hiking and trail running around Baker Beach for a few hours: ignoring "Stay off the cliff" signs, watching spring water form little deltas on the beach, dodging waves on the backside of Fort Point, and spending a while sitting on top of one of the batteries perched into the hillside talking to Emily, who's in Philadelphia with her brothers for a few more days. All this, barefoot or in the Vibrams. I gotta say, it felt amazing to go barefoot on the trails. Like the best foot massage ever every step. I can now handle most of the trails around the Presidio barefoot for a little while at least, but put on the Vibrams for rock-hopping and climbing. I still can't run more than a mile or so, though, before my knee forces me into a limp, but I can last a bit longer on trails than on straight pavement or even sand.

I'm gonna guess that what's more interesting than my barefoot habits is how the last week went, so I'll change subjects.

It was crazy cool (pics in the link). We got to help a lot of people and make a lot of friends with the best kind of people also volunteering their time. As part of the Orphanage Outreach Health Corps we didn't spend much time interacting with the kids at the orphanage, but spent 4 days helping people in the small communities scattered throughout the giant banana plantation to the south.

View UOP Dental Mission to the DR 2010 in a larger map

It was interesting seeing the differences in people from one community to the next, like each had it's own distinct personality. Our 3rd and 4th days saw a large number of Creole-only-speaking Haitians. We did some fillings and cleanings, but it was mostly pulling out what was left of bombed-out teeth or the remains of roots still infected and sitting in the bone. 4 other dentists and some of their staff were there as well and we all took turns working with them throughout the week.

Our dorms were wood frames with metal roofs and chain link fence and tarps/boards for partial siding. Inside were rough metal bunk beds with mosquito nets. Despite the open air, I didn't sleep under even a sheet for half of the week, and for the other half, a sheet was plenty. Showers were cold and limited to wetting and rinsing (turn water off to soap up). The hired local staff were great and the food was delicious and plenteous (lots of rice, beans, and fresh papayas and pineapples).

Orphanage Outreach is a fantastic organization. Very well organized and very efficient. They have been able to expand a small one-roomed orphanage (managed by a local minister) into a large two-story building with a wall around the property and lots of care for the orphans. They also recently purchased an old hotel in town and it is used as an English Institute for any children in the community. O.O. has also expanded to another orphanage in the town of Jaibon, not too far away. Everything is done by volunteers and donations exclusively. The leaders sign up to volunteer for 1-2 years at a time. Our group leader, Bryson, was terrific.

Our last day was spent seeing sights in Monte Cristi including a gift shop, supermarket, clocktower, museum, ice cream/motobike parlor (weird combo, I know), and the English Institute before spending the afternoon at a beautiful beach just north of the city.

Our own group also forked out a bit of our own money (only $80/person) to go a day early and spend a night in a resort at Puerto Plata. It was an interesting experience going from a sterile, isolated, resort-complex to the poorest of poor. Even most of their clothes are from donations. Our flight back to New York was delayed 3 hours, so we missed our connection to San Francisco. Delta put us up in the Double Tree near the airport for the night and booked most of us for First Class this morning. First class was really nice, but almost a bit silly, like placing table cloths over the tray table for the gourmet style meals they provided. So, this week we got to see luxury and poverty. I gotta be honest, the luxury was nice, but working hard and getting a few good times at the end was way better.

Everyone worked hard in the hot weather and it was an intense week. It was great to be working so hard for someone else's benefit, who would otherwise have no help dentally or medically. Most came to us with pain and just wanted the cause of the pain out.

I'll have pictures on Facebook soon. It was being finicky on me tonight. (Update: If you missed the link above, they're here).

Off to uncharted lands!

I sent out letters to everyone and their goldfish asking for help to go on a dental mission during spring break. I got a great response and want to thank those of you reading this who could help out. But for those of you who didn't get the letter, or I don't like enough to send one (seriously, you'd have to be on my hate-for-all-eternity list to not get one... or it got lost in the mail or something, no worries), here's the haps:

Groups of students get together and plan dental mission trips during school breaks. They're not school sponsored, but most are through an external charity organization of some kind. Some of the trips are vacations with a couple days of service, others are intense week-long slave labor clinics (the group that went to Jamaica worked 10 hours/day for 6 days or something, but did get to stay in a Sandals resort at night with all-included restaurants and stuff), so when I saw the itinerary for this trip to the Dominican Republic, I got excited. Arrive Saturday, work Monday through Thursday, spend Friday doing "cultural" things like visiting a nearby national park or large market, and fly home Saturday. And it's a third cheaper than the more popular vacation-y trips. It's through Orphanage Outreach, who arranges for volunteers of all kinds to come and help out. It's in the small town of Monte Cristi on the northwest coast of the DR and we'll be spending a lot of time in the open-air clinic helping the workers/families living on the banana/sugarcane plantations. There will be about 18 in our group and some other dentists from other places coming next week. Since it fills up our break, most in the group wanted to get there a day early and just hang out/relax, so we're leaving today, immediately after our last final. (Like, get out of the final and run to the school's housing 10 blocks away to leave at 12:15).

I'm excited about going, but I don't travel much and am more nervous about the traveling than anything. I've left the continent once, to Hawaii, and only left the country to Canada and just inside Mexico, so this is a bigger jump for me. We will be in New York for about 8 hours, in the middle of the night, and we have no plans to fill that time (sleeping in JFK airport does not get good reviews) so I've got a bunch of audiobooks and movies on my ipod to kill time in between naps. I've got lots of bugspray and sunscreen, as well as my own pair of Vibram Five Fingers (for the adventures and fun stuff), and my very first official pair of scrubs (pants at least, they give us shirts to wear while there). I just realized I don't have a hat or sunglasses. Dang it.

I've got the camera and will try to take LOTS of pictures. As for the rest of the family, they're in Utah at Emily's parents. Today, Grace is going skiing for the first time.

True Believer or Fake Imposter?

This guy from Vermont spent 5 years immersing himself into extreme Muslim society in Yemen and Saudi Arabia in order to get to know the culture better. Hopefully, close exposure would remove so many of the fears Westerners have in radical Muslims. Turns out, it didn't. Close exposure only made him more worried. If I were this guy, I'd hire full-time body guards for the rest of my life.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/worldview/100308/al-qaeda-yemen-islam-convert

Knock me out like a ton of bricks

In our pharmacology class we've been learning the basics of general anesthesias. To start off this section we watched this episode of NOVA made in the 1970's on the history of anesthesia. Pretty crazy. What impressed me most were the lives lost or ruined by and during the development of anesthetics. Not just patients, but the doctors and scientists who experimented mostly on themselves, often becoming addicted to the substances or worse. And since addiction was not understood really at all yet, they often faced severe consequences for their research. A classmate found the video online and shared it with the class. I thought it was fascinating and some of you might like it too. It's about an hour long, but the first 11 minutes give a nice backdrop to the story. It was the two dentists portrayed here in the beginning that separately discover the first two general anesthesias. Their stories are pretty interesting as well.