Belmont, North Carolina native Brandon Hammond will call the Manning area home for the next year.
One of eight students participating in clinical rotations at Clarendon Memorial Hospital as part of that entity's partnership with Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine, Hammond came to Manning with his twin brother, Robert Logan Hammond, who is also a student with VCOM.
Hammond studied biology at Erskine College, and said he decided to study medicine as a junior in high school.
"We were playing baseball, and I dove and hit the center fielder's knee, and had a concussion in the outfield," Hammond said. "It led to a seizure. The doctors still really couldn't find what was wrong with me, and they ran a lot of tests."
Eventually, Hammond was diagnosed with a heart problem.
"I went to a church camp that summer, and the guys came and laid hands on me," he said. "After that, I went to have a heart catheter at Duke, and I didn't have a heart problem. Seeing me go from something serious for sure to nothing just sparked my interest in the medical field."
Hammond said he's looking primarily at family medicine, but he's still open to other fields.
"I'm going to use this year to further decide what I'm going into for sure," Hammond said.
