Clinic & Midterms Week

Sorry for the long delay, last week was our midterms week. Yes, I know what you are thinking, they actually do work on this trip haha!!! But if you were thinking that, then you are very wrong. First, we assist in saving lives weekly. Yes, some might call us heroes haha. Also, we attend class in the mornings and it is not easy competing academically against a bunch of people who want to be doctors!!! But no worries, we all survived the week and made sure we were well rewarded this weekend. Since we spent most of our time writing long research papers, this weeks blog is primarily going to focus on my clinical experience.

I spent the last two weeks working at the major public hospital in Oaxaca called Hospital Civil. I started off the week working in the OBGYN department. Before you say EWWWW, this was probably my favorite shift because I got to help with the post-labor baby work, which only involved cute babies. Here is a picture of the Labor Ward where a couple of tubbos are looking to shed some weight.

Here is where I spent most of my time in OBGYN. Once here, we gave each baby eyedrops to fight off any bacteria, and a vitamin K shot to help clot their blood, specifically the blood in the umbilical cord. After that we would run through a check list that told us how far along the baby was gestationally. For example, if the baby had several crease lines on the bottom of his or her foot, that would mean they have been developing longer. Smooth feet means the baby was less developed, which is what we saw in premature babies.

Here is one of the baby girls I assisted with. You can see they just finished putting her foot print on her birth certificate.

My next shift was in the Surgery department. Here are my friends hanging out in the on-call room until we are called for surgery. A typical day in surgery meant arriving at seven for class, then following the doctor bed to bed as we went through rounds, and finishing the day with a few surgeries. The classes were cool because they were powerpoint presentations of the surgeries we were going to be doing that day. It helped fill us students in with the process, and put everyone else on the same page. Rounds were exactly like you would see on a medical tv show, like Scrubs. We would go bed to bed, short presentation of the patient's case would be said, and then the doctor would ask everyone questions. After rounds we would go to surgery, but I'll explain more about that later.

Here I am practicing Laparoscopic surgery with there simulator. It was like playing a video game. The objective in the simulator was to put beads on a string. It was really hard but after 10 or so tries I was really getting the hang of it. 

Here is a picture of my partners and I with one of the surgeons. He was great at explaining everything he did, and even would pause at moments so we could take pictures. 

Here is another one of the doctors we worked with and two of his residents. This was a gallbladder removal and, as you can see, the surgery room is very similar to that in the United States.

This was probably the most interesting surgery I have seen because of my dad's hand accident. Lets just say my day was very lucky. This man got his hand caught in a machine, which took off his pinky and left the rest of his hand severely damaged. Several days after his accident we had to go in and remove the finger next to his pinky because it wasn't receiving blood. I debated showing a picture of the fingers because they they were taken off so cleanly that they looked like a halloween prank, but I decided to not take the risk. Also, just to note, in Mexico they wouldn't have reattached my dads finger. They only reserve that option for young kids.

My last day in surgery I saw a man who broke the top of his femur. You can see where the bone broke in the drawing on the side of the X-ray. This surgery was crazy because they literally had to use a drill gun to drill holes in the bone and screw the rod in place. The surgeons were more like carpenters than doctors haha.

My next shift was scheduled to be in the Pediatric department but, unfortunately, the doctor didn't want students following him around. I was disappointed because that was the shift I was most looking forward to, but it was probably for the best because it doesn't sound like the doctor was very nice. So instead, I was in the Oncology department. The majority of what I saw here was the removal of tumors but here is a CT scan of a person with kidney cancer. On the left side of the picture, right next to the vertebrae, is a normal circular kidney. On the other side is an abnormal, tumor-filled kidney. Unfortunately for this woman, we weren't able to remove this kidney because she reacted badly to the anasthesia, went into cardiac arrest, and had to be resuscitated. Thankfully, she survived but they were unable to continue the surgery.

On tuesday, last week, we went to a restaurant where we were going to learn to make traditional Mexican food. We were split into 4 groups and each group was given recipes of different things to make. Here are all the ingredients that my group was given.

Here is my group hard at work. We were assigned to make Arroz con Chepil, Ensaladas de Acelgas Almojo de Ajo, Pozole de Pollo Rojo, Tejocote en Dulce, and Agua de Jiotilla.

Here is a picture of the other groups in the restaurant. My favorite part about the whole thing was wandering around to other tables and eating other group's ingredients haha. 

Here was the majority of the final product. Looks good, right? Except, I really didn't enjoy any of it. I think it is called traditional for a reason, meaning they no longer prefer to eat this food in the present. The safest thing on that plate was the tamale, which was practically just corn and no meat. I'm so culturally diverse haha.  

Today we went back to the orphanage to play with the kids. It was a lot of fun and really rewarding. This time, because they knew who we were, they all ran and gave us hugs as we walked in. Here is a picture of my roommate Duke and some of the kids playing Pogs. I remember collecting those as a kid.

Here is a picture of everyone starting to settle down after a game of capture the flag. It was Pirates vs. Ninjas and each team won twice.

All the little girls loved to play with everyone's hair. I think they were going for the Whoopi Goldberg look haha. It was another great two weeks and we have two left till we go to Puerto Escondido. I'm really excited. Enjoy the post and please comment. It lets me know that people are reading this haha.