Medical Intensive

I was one of the "victims" for people to practice rescuing!

Back in May, I spent a couple of weeks out in North Carolina taking a medical course designed for missionaries serving in remote areas.  I’m just now posting about it, because I finally got some pictures of my time out there.  Let me tell you, it was intense!  It was a 12 day course where we learned skills like suturing, inserting stomach tubes, giving injections, splinting, and more!  (And we practiced those on each other!)  It was great to have one semester of nursing school under my belt as a foundation to build on.

Practicing suturing... not as easy as I thought it would be.

We lived in little cabins in the woods without any electricity or running water.  Most people had to go outside to use an outhouse, but they were so gracious to give me the only cabin with an attached outhouse so that I wouldn’t have to go out in the woods in the middle of the night!  They took very good care of me since I was pregnant.

We spent all morning and most afternoon sitting in lectures and doing labs.  The rest of the day we spent working on case studies.  It was excellent practice in learning how to diagnose and treat many of the illnesses we’ll see in the tropics.  Some people stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, but I went to bed early every night just so that I could survive!

I’m so glad I took the course, but I sure missed Ryan while I was gone!  I managed to survive the course and made it through with nothing more than some very swollen ankles from sitting so much.

My roommates and are at our little cabin.