operating room adventures

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ok guys, brace yourselves, cause this is yet another long entry, but the weeks when the doctors were here were pretty action packed for me.
i'm not sure where to start. i suppose my first self-esteem "charla," which is kinda like a seminar is as good a place as any. Julie and I planned this little skit to display to the women of the campo (the women who live out in the middle of nowhere and work the land) that they are not their husbands' slaves and that they have to start respecting themselves if they want their husbands to respect them. (there is a big problem here with machismo) Anyways, I was playing the wife and a peruvian friend of ours was playing my husband and we were performing in front of about 25 people. Throughout the charla, there were nasty little wasps pretty much attacking us. I kept swatting them off , but one of the little buggers flew up my shirt and bit me on the stomach...it hurt like no other, so of course my reflex was to lift up my shirt and swat at it. In doing so, I of course flashed the entire audience...oops! However, the more embarrassing part of this story occurred the next day at lunch in the convent, when i told the nuns that " Yesterday the obisbo bit my stomach." They all stared at me incredulously, until i realized what i had done. I had meant to say, avispa (which means wasp), but instead I said obispo (which means bishop). So, essentially, I had just told a religious community that the bishop (a colleague of theirs and a very well respected man in the community here) had bit me on my stomach...whoops!
My other language mistake that made me turn a bit red was when i was trying to tell a peruvian guy friend that "I brought my concha because it's cold out." Of course, through hysterical laughter, he explained to me that I had definitely meant to say chompa (which means sweater) because concha, while literally meaning oyster, is slang for a woman's vagina...you know, because i usually leave that home when it's warm out....oops.
Besides just making ridiculous mistakes, I have actually been putting my language skills to use. I worked pretty much non-stop for the last two weeks as a translator for a team of doctors and surgeons that came down from the US (just like julie told you). It was an incredible two weeks. My castellano (that's what they call the kind of spanish they speak here) has improved immensely because I was just talking all day every day and i learned tons of crazy things about medicine and surgery.
the first week i translated for a urologist, named joe, who was doing all of the consultations. I actually didn't run into too many problems understanding people, although there were a few who had no teeth...they were a little rough, but we got through it ok. People came in to see us for everything from achey bodies to kidney stones to congestive heart failure to a curved penis. Every day was an adventure. For the first time in my life (in english or spanish) I had to say things like, "The doctor is now going to put his finger in your rectum" and "When you pee against the wall, can you stand far away and still touch the wall with your pee, or is it too weak to reach the wall?" I felt bad for the grown men and guys around my age who came in to talk about problems with their prostates and their penises and had to tell the whole story through me, some of them were pretty nervous at first, but most of them eventually got comfortable with me, and at least half kept calling me "doctora." i just got to the point where i stopped correcting them, especially since so many of the cases were similar, so joe just started telling me to diagnose the cases and explain to them what to do. he was all about trying to get me to become a doctor, so he would teach me as much stuff as he could. i learned to take blood pressures, to recognize undescended testicles in children, to recognize sun damage to the eyes, and how to treat tiny kidney stones, among other things.
then for the second week, i ended up staying with joe the urologist, but moving to the operating room. i had to wear scrubs, the hat (which gave me some SERIOUS hat hair), the mask, and the shoe covers, and occasionaly gloves, depending on what i'd be touching...i looked real hott. i worked both as a translater, nurse assistant, and urology tech (i was in charge of the care and cleaning of joe's personal surgical equipment that was more than $12000...didn't he realize what a klutz i am?) but, it was really just an incredible week. it was occasionally a little nerve-racking when i would be translating between the two surgeons doing the actual operation (one peruvian, and joe, the american). I would be leaning over the body with the two of them, translating things like, "Cut this tissue, suction that, and then stitch over here." There were also tons of huge medical vocabulary that i didn't even know what meant in english, but because most of them are from latin, i would just say the same word with a spanish accent and the peruvian surgeon would understand (phew). i also learned a bit about anesthesiology because the nurse anesthetist that i was working with would let me help him when he was setting the patient up to get a spinal. my favorite part by far was the communicating with the patient. i got to go wheel them in from pre-op, assuring them that everything was going to be ok, i got to hold their hands and explain to them what they would be feeling as the anesthetist starting giving them drugs through the needle in their hand and their spine, and i got to respond to whatever question or need they had. also, after we were done with surgeries for the day...usually around 6, i would walk over to post-op to spend some time with the patients i had seen that day.
oh, and one of the most remarkable parts of this experience was when our surgeries got put on hold because they needed to do an emergency c-section for this woman. i got to be present for my first birth. it was breathtaking. we left the room with one more life than we had gone into it with. absolutely amazing. my ovaries were doing some serious cartwheels!
of course there were some hard things too, like when we'd see a patient in consultation and tell him that he needed surgery, but that there was no more room in our surgical schedule (there are just so many hours in the day and so many people already on the list). the look in their eyes killed me every time, especially because i knew they wouldn't have the money to have the surgery on their own. people here only have health insurance as children and then in life and death situations.
and then before one surgery, i had made really good friends with the patient, Edson, a 9 yr old boy. I promised him that he wasn't going to feel any pain and that he was going to do great in surgery. His surgery went really well, so i went out and told his father that everything was perfect and that Edson would be out of surgery in just a few minutes. However, when i went back into the OR, to help wheel him out, he wasn't awake yet. He was having a bad laryngal spasm (i think it was called), so when the anesthesiologist was taking the tube out of his throat he was having a lot of trouble breathing on his own and he wasn't waking up. My heart must have been on pause during this entire thing. I was just holding his hand and whispering to him, Wake up Edson, come on, you can do it (in castellano, of course). I didn't want to face his father and tell him that I had been wrong, we had lied, everything wasn't going to be ok. Of course, everyone else in the room was more accustomed to seeing this sort of thing, and they just worked to wake him up through the lovely art of medicine. After about 6 more minutes, he was breathing well enough to go to post-op. I was relieved, but still couldn't wait to see Edson awake and lively like I had a few hours before. Luckily, when I went to visit him in post-op, he was quite sweaty, but eating some crackers and doing just fine. thank god!
That, and doing hours of crazy dancing with a bunch of middle aged american doctors and peruvian health volunteers in a discoteca, pretty much sums up my experiences with the medical campaign.
Oh and this week was their celebration for día de los difuntos, which means their is a huge fair with rides, games, and food outside of the cemetary and everybody brings lots of flowers and candles to the grave of their loved ones. Some people actually stay at the grave lighting candles all night, some people play music and sing, other people pray. It's pretty interesting to see. Oh and the majority of their tombs are above ground in catacomb style. And because of that holiday, we got two days off. So we went to visit the Marist Brothers in Sullana (about two hours north east of us). They (of course) were a blast. One of them reminds me so much of Javier from that show Felicity. They also run two really awesome schools there (one for the kids who can pay, and one for the kids who can't). they were some of the most hospitable people i've ever met and we laughed a lot.
i think that's about it. i LOVE hearing about jamaica and learning the language, and johnathon, you know i love hearing everything about esopus...but where is everybody else? i miss you guys! WRITE MORE!
ok enough begging, i hope all is well with you guys...jule and i think about you often! love and hugs, kerry

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Comments

[Nancy]

WOW
I'm so jealous of your hospital room experiences...those are ONCE IN A LIFETIME!