Field trip

Today MAJ Soltis took CPT Lee and myself on a field trip to Ft. Myer, VA for travel clinic at Rader Clinic (which is actually on Henderson Hall, the Marines side of things). It was a nice drive through Rock Creek Park and the George Washington Parkway to get there.

Here's a picture of Rader clinic, obviously without the shadowy dead guy in the foreground. I actually didn't see this part of the building--we came in through the back.

CPT Lee handled the first two patients, mother and daughter going to China, and then MAJ Soltis gave the couple needing the waivers for the yellow vaccine their paperwork. Then my first patient didn't show, so we took a long shopping/lunch break. The PX (actually MCX--Marine Corps eXchange) at Henderson Hall is probably the nicest one I've ever seen. If most PXes are like Wal-Mart, this one is Macy's. Then we dined at the Marine Club for lunch before coming back for my afternoon patients, husband and wife going on a cruise in the Caribbean and up the Amazon river. The wife is a microbiologist, so she has had pretty much every vaccine known to man; the husband is retired Air Force, so he also had every vaccine known to man--in 1969. Needless to say, he needed a few boosters. So we talked to them and got everything squared away for their trip (and did a lot of small talk in the process), and then headed back to WRAIR, where we were sent home after being assigned our homework--the first four chapters of the CDC's Pink Book (vaccine handbook).

I had a good time at travel clinic, and I feel like I learned a good deal--it was different enough from travel clinic at Madigan that I can't exactly say it was the same experience. Plus, it's always nice to have a change of scenery.