Monday, February 26, 2007

I am totally exhausted right now- but had an interesting day so though I should write about it before I head to bed. I was back at the hospital today, which meant a very early morning. Unfortunately, today was also the beginning of frosh week, so my rez had a HUGE kick-off party last night to celebrate. Since my studio is in the main building (which has a bar on the main floor), my window happened to be about 20 meters from the giant sub woofer that was pounding dance music till about 1am. Sabiha and I did go down to the party at dinner time to get a beer and some free food- but we only stayed for about half an hour.

Anyway, my day at the hospital was good despite all that. This morning we saw a patient with esophageal varices who had been vomiting blood all night (so he said). He looked like he had a rough life- had tattoos of naked women all over him and very hard to understand even though he was only 49. Esophageal varices are usually due to cirrhosis of the liver (which in his case was probably due to alcohol abuse). At lunch Nick, Josh and I went to the cardiology ward, played with the eco machine (I forget the proper name- but it is used to look at heart murmurs), and watched an angiogram in progress. The angiogram was really, really awesome. We had to sit behind glass with the radiographer and the nurse since you have to be wearing a lead vest to go into the actual operating space. The man getting the angiogram was awake (they only use a local anesthetic) and there was blood all over his leg- at the femoral artery- which is where they put the tube in. We could also see the doctors injecting die into the coronary arteries on the computers screens and the nurse was telling us what was going on and what to look for. I can’t wait till we learn scrubbing, gowning and gloving so that we can go right in!

We had a quick lunch at the staff cafeteria- which is probably the cheapest food that I have found yet in this country. I got a whole lunch for $4.00 (mac and cheese, zucchini and peppers, and an apple juice).

After lunch we went to the clinical skills lab and learned the basics on our stethoscopes, how to take blood pressures (on each other with a sphygmomanometer) as well as other vitals like respiration rates and heart rates. We also took our temperatures with those thermometers that doctors and nurses put in your ear (and it only takes 2 seconds)!

We finished that at around 3pm, so Nick, Josh and I went looking for some more interesting patients. I found a 50 year old lady who just had her hip replaced, so I wanted to go talk to her- but her family was there visiting, so I’ll have to try to find another one next week. Dad’s having his hip resurfacing done sometime fairly soon- so I wanted to see what this lady had done and what she thought about it so I could tell Dad! I never really got to talk to her, but she looked like she was doing well.

There weren’t any other really interesting patients in the orthopedic ward, so we went back to the emergency ward (where we were last week). There we found a guy with a broken jaw (he got sucker punched at a bar on Friday night) and a 21-year girl who probably had Crohns disease (but hadn’t been diagnosed yet). We looked at the x-rays of the broken jaw- and it was really a HUGE break!

I took the train home with Nick and Josh and then went to get sushi for dinner with Sabiha when I got home. The restaurant we went to was right around the corner from our rez and the sushi was self-serve on a conveyer belt. I didn’t eat much though- cause I think I might have had some bad yogurt this morning and my stomach has been bothering me all day. It is finally starting to feel better now!

I’m off to bed- I have another early morning tomorrow. Only 33 days till Fiji! Miss you guys! xoxoxo