Tuesday 13 August 2013

A Bloody Night

Day 76 - 13 de Agosto: Quito, Ecuador

Today was the one day that we got to start a bit later. I woke up to have breakfast at 7:30 today, and by 8:15, my group was ready to go in the lobby with our tutor for the morning shift. Turned out, they had found a lab coat for me to borrow, so i dont look out of place anymore. This morning, our topic was internal medicine - basically, medicine for everything that doesn't involve surgeries. No sketchy taxis today - instead, we went in the same van that drove us to Camerones the first time. When we arrived, we were brought into an office that belonged to the father of the owners of HLD. His specialty was internal med and since he was out of town, we could use his office and equipment. We initially did a lesson that delved more deeply into our vital signs - mainly exploring cardiology and neurology. After this, we did a variety of hands on medical exams on each other. We started by using the stethoscope to listen for heart murmurs (we all were fine). Then we listened for clear breaths in the lungs. Following that, we gave each other ECGs using an old machine that looked more like a torture device. The machine screwed up with mine a little bit - we were taught how to read the graphs and i confirmed that i wasn't dying like my prognosis read. After a little more talking, we moved onto physical analyses. We learned how to check the state of each of the facial nerves, check reflexes, grade the state of consciousness of a patient and check for ear and throat problems. It was like real doctor training! After the session was done, we went to a little family run place for lunch - and lucky me, the lunch special was lasagna! It was good. Afterwards, we returned to the hotel and i found my roommate in the lobby. A few days ago, his passport was stolen, and he spent the morning trying to find the consulate to get things sorted out. Turned out, he needed a police report, so i went with him to try and find a police station. There was one on my map, but it was in the wrong spot, so i had to ask a couple places where it was until someone finally knew. We came across a division of the police called tourist security service, so we entered, hoping that this was the right place. It was, however you'd think a place like this would have at least one english speaker... nope. We sat down with this officer and I had to translate the entire thing for both the police and my roommate. I did remarkably well, so i was proud. We hung out at a sports bar for a bit before returning to the hotel. Upon returning, i met up with my rotation group to do a bit of work on our case study. We basically have it figured out though, but we made up a list of questions to ask our tutor. Afterwards, i got a bit of rest before returning to the lobby to get picked up to go to our evening session. We had to wait a little while though - our van showed up at our destination to pick us up, rather than our hotel. When we finally got there, we did a lecture on trauma before doing the coolest lab ever! We walked downstairs to a smaller room and were taught how to draw blood! After the demonstration, we actually drew blood from each other! I immediately sat down first and asked someone to stick me (i have really easy veins to see) but everyone was too nervous at first so the tutors did another demo on themselves. After that, I convinced a girl that wasn't going to do it to try. She did it first and got it right away - wasn't painful or anything. Then it was my turn. She had tiny little veins but they had a good colour to them which made it easier. I got it right away too, however she had some serious pressure in her veins so i ended up taking a full capsule of blood in like a second - twice the amount of blood that anyone got! I joked that she should get juice and cookies after this. Anyway, we all tried and more than half of us were successful. We returned to the neighbourhood of the hotel and went for dinner at a bbq place. I had a good chilli burger, then we finally came home and packed it in for the night.

The ECG
Me getting blood taken
My turn
My blood and her blood
Dinner

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