As some of you may know, about a week ago I obtained my first stomach bacteria :). I was so sick, no throwing up, but fever, chills, headache and the occasional body pain. I went to see the doctor at the University. My director went with me for translating purposes though I don't understand entirely why because I probably no more about whats going on inside my body and how to explain it better than he does (probably not in reality, but I am a big kid and I think I can visit the Spanish doctor on my own). So we entered and the doctor simply listened to my stomach with his Stethoscope and the dug his fingers into my belly and asked if it hurt (of course it hurts your like rupturing my spleen with your fingers). Then he placed one hand on my belly and thumped his hand with his free hand and moved it in a circle. From this and my descriptions of how I felt he came to the decision that it was an infection, infection of what, who knows, it's a mystery and he didn't take a blood tests. SO everything you contract here is an infection I have learned, you get a stomach infection, intestinal infection, throat infection; everything is placed under this broad theme of "infection", but I wonder what constitutes infection. I feel I may never know.
So with this nifty new bacteria I was put on 500mg of Ciproflaxin (just an antibiotic) and was told that I couldn't go to the hospital for a week. I think my director was sadder than I was, but that was because I knew my friends were going to the SAFARI on Friday. If you don't already know, my internship as demonstrated above is amazing, but I am not aloud to do anything on most of Friday and half of Saturdays, this includes our two "free trips" that we have paid for in our tuition. So therefore in a way the internship sucks because I can't go traveling with my friends. I originally was going to miss he Safari and also miss a trip this weekend. I missed the trip anyway because If I asked my director if I could go he would shake his head up and down while saying in his poor English, "Don't you tink you should be at home resting," keep in mind he is answering my question by shaking his head up and down. So free weekend equals Safari.
The Safari in which I have said so much about is called the Africam Safari, it seemed to be sponsored by Animal Planet and you can probably look it up online. So the Safari consisted of us all riding in a big bus hanging out to take pictures of animals we have never seen in our lives. There were gazelles, giraffes, zebras, lions,and tigers and bears oh my! Hippos, every type of monkey that exists, elephants,alligators, I really mean everything. At the end you could walk through other exhibits with insects, butterflies and there was a kangaroo den where you could actually pet them. At the end of our safari adventure we ended our day with some spicy food and then went home and passed out.
As for the rest of my weekend, Saturday night all of us girls went out dancing, where we got in for free and received a free round of shots because we were the first group of girls and we were all foreign. Eventually three more friends joined us and because they did they gave us a free bottle of fancy tequila. It was pretty crazy, and it turned out that the only ones dancing at this so called "dance hall" were the Americans haha. It was still a blast and an end to a very good weekend.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
The Gift of Life
First and fore most I would like to appolgize to the poor subjects that will read this, I believe that all but what I type is in Spanish. I have not a clue as to how I can fix it, but with time (probably by the time I come home in Decemeber) I will have it fixed ;). I received this idea from Jay who will probably crap himself with glee because he finally got the girlfriend to start a blog haha. This is so that some of you out there and keep up with some of the finer details of my grand adventure, especially since I started my internship yesterday.So life in Mexico has been interesting from the bumpy rides of public transportation where you are continually looking for the nearest escape exit, to eating food from small venders on the street that you know will make you terribly sick. I finally have found a place in my heart for foreign exchange students. You may be wondering at this moment why my first entry is called "The Gift of Life"? This is because today was the second day of my internship and I experienced the gift of life.
I learn a lot from the residents at the hopital; they let my participate in the discussing of what the patient may or may not have and they let me touch the patient most of all. Now by touching the patient I don't mean anything creepy, I just mean that in the U.S. you literally can't touch a patient until, well....your done with medical school! Yesterday I listened to an older womens heart and her lungs, she had bronchitus (secondly, again I am going to apologize it is possible that some of these medical words are wrong, I know how to spell them in Spanish and I guess at the English spelling). I also experienced hearing the heartbeat of a baby while it is still inside of the mother. Even though these things are very simple, they make me very happy. I still have not explained why this story is called "The Gift of Life".
Today was the second day of my internship and I reported cheerfully to the residents room where they all sat casually, exhausted from working through the night. I sat attentively while they read through all of the exsisting patients and explained their symptoms. From here it was off to work. I went with one young resident to see a patient. He checked her over and then we left the room. Outside of the room he asked, "What did you notice about our patient?" (this is all in Spanish of course.)
I looked at him and replied," Well she has pain in her lungs, and she is on oxygen, so she is having a hard time breathing. She has pain around the region of her bellybutton, no pain on urination, her throat hurts and when you sat her up she started coffing. She also has a fever which means her body is fighting off an infection."
He looked back at me and said," Very good, what does she have?"
Now I figured that the first time I would ever get this question would be a couple more years from now. Maybe at a time in which I was at least in medical school! We talked and I tried to name a couple things I thought possibly had all those symptoms. Turns out the turd didn't tell me that she had been in a car accident the week before and her lungs were stressed and thats why she had a hard time breathing; the stomach pain we because she has a hernia. How was I supposed to know she had been in a car crash, its doctor not mind reader ha ha. So after observing our patient we were of to surgery, (this is where the gift of life comes in).
I was going to watch my first surgery today and not only was it a surgery, but it was a C-section. I must say, even though it wasn't a natural birth (which I have been told I will see during my Gynocology rotation) it is still amazing! There is so much happiness and joy in the room that you can't help but get sucked in no matter what kind of an attitude you have or how much you dislike children. The feelings when the baby is pulled out, well first of all I would be (excuse my language) pissed if someone ripped on my head like that! Ha ha! They grabbed the baby by the neck and just start tugging, and there are like three of them helping! Then I new that babies are usually blue when coming out, what they don't tell you is they are actually like purple and not a faint purple like really purple. At one time myself and all or you reading this were purple! They took the baby to a table where they sucked all the fluid out and I was allowed to cut the umbilical cord. I had the experience of watching two of these and there were not very many people in the room so I got to ask all the questions I wanted and talk with all of the doctors. If I happened to so nothing else for the rest of my internship then today made up for the next four months. At the end of it all the resident asked me how I felt. I told her I never want to have children and laughed.
I also watched a laproscopic surgery on a man's stomach, but I came in late to this one and don't really know what they were doing exactly. I can say that I am very impressed with laproscopic surgery. You can see everything on the screen perfectly and it is so much better for the patient. (For those of you that don't know this is a typer of surgery where they insert a camara in through the bellybutton and then make three small incisions that are held open by something that resembles a tunnel. Through this tunnel that they can feed through mini skinny versions of all the instruments and conduct the surgery by watching through the camara on a big screen.) The technology for this is awesome and the patient has decrease healing time and decreased chances for infection.I ended up staying an hour early today watching surgeries and it was well worth it.
After work I left on my adventerous bus ride home to eat lunch with my family. They ate breaded peppers of some sort with cheese in them. They said I couldn't have any because they were so spicy they would kill me haha. SO I sat at the table and watched them all sweat while I ate the same thing only instead of a pepper I have zuccini. So my day was pretty eventful and I am sure that there will be more to come, as for right now I am loving it!
I learn a lot from the residents at the hopital; they let my participate in the discussing of what the patient may or may not have and they let me touch the patient most of all. Now by touching the patient I don't mean anything creepy, I just mean that in the U.S. you literally can't touch a patient until, well....your done with medical school! Yesterday I listened to an older womens heart and her lungs, she had bronchitus (secondly, again I am going to apologize it is possible that some of these medical words are wrong, I know how to spell them in Spanish and I guess at the English spelling). I also experienced hearing the heartbeat of a baby while it is still inside of the mother. Even though these things are very simple, they make me very happy. I still have not explained why this story is called "The Gift of Life".
Today was the second day of my internship and I reported cheerfully to the residents room where they all sat casually, exhausted from working through the night. I sat attentively while they read through all of the exsisting patients and explained their symptoms. From here it was off to work. I went with one young resident to see a patient. He checked her over and then we left the room. Outside of the room he asked, "What did you notice about our patient?" (this is all in Spanish of course.)
I looked at him and replied," Well she has pain in her lungs, and she is on oxygen, so she is having a hard time breathing. She has pain around the region of her bellybutton, no pain on urination, her throat hurts and when you sat her up she started coffing. She also has a fever which means her body is fighting off an infection."
He looked back at me and said," Very good, what does she have?"
Now I figured that the first time I would ever get this question would be a couple more years from now. Maybe at a time in which I was at least in medical school! We talked and I tried to name a couple things I thought possibly had all those symptoms. Turns out the turd didn't tell me that she had been in a car accident the week before and her lungs were stressed and thats why she had a hard time breathing; the stomach pain we because she has a hernia. How was I supposed to know she had been in a car crash, its doctor not mind reader ha ha. So after observing our patient we were of to surgery, (this is where the gift of life comes in).
I was going to watch my first surgery today and not only was it a surgery, but it was a C-section. I must say, even though it wasn't a natural birth (which I have been told I will see during my Gynocology rotation) it is still amazing! There is so much happiness and joy in the room that you can't help but get sucked in no matter what kind of an attitude you have or how much you dislike children. The feelings when the baby is pulled out, well first of all I would be (excuse my language) pissed if someone ripped on my head like that! Ha ha! They grabbed the baby by the neck and just start tugging, and there are like three of them helping! Then I new that babies are usually blue when coming out, what they don't tell you is they are actually like purple and not a faint purple like really purple. At one time myself and all or you reading this were purple! They took the baby to a table where they sucked all the fluid out and I was allowed to cut the umbilical cord. I had the experience of watching two of these and there were not very many people in the room so I got to ask all the questions I wanted and talk with all of the doctors. If I happened to so nothing else for the rest of my internship then today made up for the next four months. At the end of it all the resident asked me how I felt. I told her I never want to have children and laughed.
I also watched a laproscopic surgery on a man's stomach, but I came in late to this one and don't really know what they were doing exactly. I can say that I am very impressed with laproscopic surgery. You can see everything on the screen perfectly and it is so much better for the patient. (For those of you that don't know this is a typer of surgery where they insert a camara in through the bellybutton and then make three small incisions that are held open by something that resembles a tunnel. Through this tunnel that they can feed through mini skinny versions of all the instruments and conduct the surgery by watching through the camara on a big screen.) The technology for this is awesome and the patient has decrease healing time and decreased chances for infection.I ended up staying an hour early today watching surgeries and it was well worth it.
After work I left on my adventerous bus ride home to eat lunch with my family. They ate breaded peppers of some sort with cheese in them. They said I couldn't have any because they were so spicy they would kill me haha. SO I sat at the table and watched them all sweat while I ate the same thing only instead of a pepper I have zuccini. So my day was pretty eventful and I am sure that there will be more to come, as for right now I am loving it!
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