Car accidents, butterflies, and rounds

So Vacation Bolivia continues, but clinic is going to start up tomorrow. I'll be glad to get back to work, as that is the main reason for coming down here. Over the weekend, we continued to explore and enjoy Santa Cruz. On Sunday we walked around the plaza in downtown Santa Cruz. There was a nice artist's market and cafe that we spent most of the day. The departing physician, a doctor from northwestern, and his wife made us dinner and gave us a lecture on chest x-rays. The following morning, we woke early and traveled to the Butterfly Sanctuary. 2 students from Loyola and I caught a taxi at the end of the block. Traffic was very congested and everyone drives crazy here. Not as crazy as in Ghana, but enough to make your heart skip a beat! So, all of the sudden, our driver cut across 2 lanes and caused a guy behind us to rear-end our taxi. Both drivers get out and start yelling at each other and using all sorts of hand gestures. Then, they get back in the cars and drive away. Our driver's only explanation, "the other guy was drunk!". The rest of the ride was somewhat uneventful, except that everytime we were around traffic, we drove crazy and fast, but every time we weren't in traffic, we drove about 10 MPH. The butterfly sanctuary was beautiful. It was a bit more remote, reminescent of tropical jungle. They had a large caged in area for the butterflies, but also had a lot of other animals there too. At the end, there were pools people could swim. It was kind of like a cross between nature preserve and resort. We sat by the pool for awhile (don't worry, i wore SPF 30) and enjoyed some cervezas. Afterwards, we went back to Santa Cruz for dinner, ice cream, and some rounds of euchre. Tough trip, huh.

Today, we went to the public university hospital for rounds. It was interesting. I've worked at a hospital in Ghana and felt that this hospital was much better. It was similar to the hospital in Kingston, Jamaica. There were residents and students and we were on their teaching rounds. The wards were crowded with patients. Nobody washes their hands or talks to the patients. There's no such thing as HIPPA or hand sanitizer. If a test or medication is ordered, the patient or their family has to go across the street to get it done. The patients themselves were very interesting. Saw a lot of brain lesions, HIV, stoke, PCP pneumonia. I also saw a lot of management I didn't necessarily agree with, but I didn't really catch everything that was going on either. Maybe I'll catch more next week. I did notice that the male physicians there would talk only to the male students with me, and not to me or the other female student! Tomorrow we head to the rural clinic until Saturday. It should be an adventure, as the main road to the clinic is impassable!

The Real World: Bolivia

Yesterday I spent my first day in clinic here. We couldn´t make it to the real clinic because the roads are washed out (rainy season). So we had a make shift clinic about 1.5 hours away from Santa Cruz. It was about what I expected from other trips. I saw mostly diabetes, a guy who probably has some bad coronary arteries disease and needs an angiogram, but won´t get one because it´s too expensive. I saw this one guys with abscesses all over his butt and scrotum (gross!). And a man with "lumps" all over, probably neurofibromas. No ninos, though! I was expecting to see more kids. Not bad, all in all. I completly butchered the spanish language all day, but I´m slowly catching on. I should have had some more conversations in spanish with Pablo and Lynn before I left! After clinic, we made our way back to the house in Santa Cruz.

So, I feel like I´m on an episode of "the Real World: Bolivia". We live in this gigantic, nice house. Most of the people in the house are between the ages of 22-33. There´s always people coming and going. Let´s see, there is me and the 3 4th year medical students. The volunteer coordinator is just out of college and is living here for 1 year. There is a girl who is taking a year off after 1st year of medical school to decide if she really wants to do medicine. She is staying down here for a few months. There is a canadian social worker who is down here for a few weeks on a project, and taking care of some personal business. My boss´s son is living here, being an "artist", but mostly hanging out with his bolivian girlfriend who lives in the house. And then there are 3 bolivian graduate students who live here, and our housekeeper and her daughter! That´s a lot of people coming and going! There´s a big mix of english and spanish being tossed around.

So in true real world style, most of us went out last night together to celebrate saturday night. Santa Cruz is in party mode right now as people are getting ready for carnaval! It´s a really nice city. We started the evening by going to a brazilian all you can eat pizza restaurant. They had some interesting pizza combos, including a stroganoff pizza with fries on top. They even had dessert pizza, chocolate, carmel, and fruit. Afterwards, we went to a place called Jose Cuervo´s, which lived up to its name. The street we were on was filled with bars and clubs. Everyone was hanging out on the street as well, almost like a large tailgait, partying in the street and in the bars. I felt like I was at some big college town after a football game. We did some dancing. Most of the music was Daddy Yankee style. All in all, a fun night and a lazy morning today!

I've arrived!

After a very long and hectic couple of weeks, I've arrived in Bolivia! I am planning on spending 1 month here and then move on to Sydney, Australia for about 10 days. Pretty nice! This is kind of like my last hurrah before starting fellowship this summer. Anyway, yesterday was a long day of traveling. It started at 5:30 am traveling out into the subzero weather to make it to the airport. The traveling itself went so smoothly, everything seemed to be going my way. Nice seats by the window. Arrived in Miami with plenty of time to get to the next gate and have my seat changed to one closer to the front. I even met a friendly Bolivian on the flight down that lives in Chicago and is going home for carnaval. He gave me plenty of advice on things I should see and do in Bolivia. It's beautiful down here! I am staying in a house built by one of my attendings. It's awesome. Definetely in one of the better neighborhoods, so we are not really roughing it while we live in the city. I realize that I love the smell of the tropics. As soon as I got off of the plane, I could smell it. It's like a mix between humidity, green grass and flowers. Today is just a day of relaxing. Tomorrow I make my way to the rural clinic.

Crazy week with not enough time for all that I need to do! I took call for the first time in awhile. I forgot that there are aspects of call that I do enjoy. I guess I'm an adrenaline junkie. I love going to codes, doing procedure, figuring out what's going on with a really sick patient. There was a code the other night. The CV surgeon showed up and ended up cracking open the patient's chest. Unbelievable. Did I really think that going to that extreme during the code would help the patient any? No. But it was his patient, so I've got no say in how far we went during the code. I wonder if the patient ever thought that her last moments would be spent being shocked, pounding on her chest and then having her chest ripped open? Probably not. But still, it was pretty freakin cool to see the chest splayed open. Well, I only have about 1.5 weeks left before I leave. The new decision becomes, should I go to Australia during my vacation, straight from Bolivia? It's quite the plane ride! We'll see!

First time for everything

I've never had one of these. I've certainly read these things before. I thought it might be interesting to try. We'll see.