Comments

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  David Freeman March 6, 2012 at 9:03pm

  "Interviewing?" Is that what they call it these days? We called it "short arm inspection."

  When my ship was heading to Subic back in '76, I started a VD Pool. For one dollar buy in, you could guess how many cases of VD we would log during a three week port visit. The count would end two weeks after leaving port to give adequate incubation time. I got scientific and calculated the average daily infection rate from the previous WestPac and extrapolated that out to our expected stay. I guessed 218 but the winning number was 216.

  Of course back then we were only dealing with "Clap", "Black Clap (penicillin resistant)", NSU which was probably Clamidia and Syphyllis.
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  Jim Decota March 6, 2012 at 9:01pm

  Eddy, I am glad I declined the opportunity! We saw some really horific cases that came back from Nam! There were strains from over there that didn't even have names yet! It was enough to convince any young virile sailor to stay clear of that area of San Diego's entertainment district!
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  Eddy Vasile March 6, 2012 at 8:29pm

  @Jim: absolutely true. We worked withy San Diego and Orange County health authorities and when I was deployed to Subic Bay we worked with the Olangopo police (health enforcement). Man, the stories I could tell you...
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  Ron Ruiter March 6, 2012 at 6:16pm

  We didn't have any training in regards to interviewing someone who had VD. We went on a cruise to the Caribbean for 3 months and during that time with 120+ troops I was a Corpsman for, only 1 ever came down with VD and that was after many days in San Juan PR and St. Thomas VI.
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  Jim Decota March 6, 2012 at 5:16pm

  My mind may be a little hazy on this. But, I think I remember a couple of Corpsmen tell how they accompanied San Diego County health investigators when they went to the strip joints and "such" that were divulged in the follow ups on the VD cases that showed up at Balboa. Anyone remember something like that? or did something like that? I may have been being played for the naive young sailor that I was though!
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  Steve Routh March 6, 2012 at 2:02pm

  Eddy, don't have one, but I sure did a LOT of interviews!
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  Eddy Vasile March 6, 2012 at 1:30pm

  How many of you Devil Docs had one of these:

   
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  Randall L. Bruns February 26, 2012 at 6:40pm

  Thank You Eddy, unfortunately not something that is going to improve.  But that is part of the cycle, so I'll make the best of it.
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  Eddy Vasile February 26, 2012 at 6:09pm

  Randall,

  sorry to hear about your troubles. The best to you and I wish you speedy recovery.
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  Randall L. Bruns February 26, 2012 at 5:43pm

  Eddy, I just last week had to resign from WI MRC and K-9 Emergency Response Teams due to health reasons.  10+ years with KERT and 4 years with MRC.  Both great orginizations and I will miss them both.  But when you become more of a liability than an asset it's time to get out.