Keener

I may have learned more things today than any other day of my life.

Today started at 5:45 when I opted to shower instead of running with Brianne and Jason. For breakfast, I had a muffin I bought at a bakery last night because Jason, Jenny and I had to leave before Inès made our eggs. (This is important.) Just before seven, we made our way down to the hospital to watch surgeries! My placement hasn't officially started, but I'm going to hang out at the hospital a bit anyway. Jason and Jenny had already been but it was my first time, so I was more than a little nervous - I've heard so many stories of people passing out in ORs and I didn't want to be one of them. Most people in the hospital bring their own white uniforms, but scrubs are supplied for surgeries, so we were handed the most well-worn scrubs I have ever encountered. They were practically see-through but they did the trick, so we got decked out in scrub pants and shirts, hair nets (Jenny actually got a cap) and cloth botas.

Once we were ready, we spent a lot of time peeking into the ORs to see if anybody else was - they weren't.  My Spanish is still pretty rudimentary, so all I could really say was ¿Puedo ayudar? (Can I help?) and hope that they understood. One nurse let Jason and me move boxes of IV bags, but other than that we didn't have much to do - until they actually started rolling patients in, that is. There are three ORs at Santiago hospital and we stepped into the first one to help. I'm really grateful that Jason was there; since he's a firefighter/paramedic and the staff at the hospital know him, he could just jump in and show me what to do. We help the patient onto the bed and I learned how to put the leads on! (White on right, smoke over fire, etc.) Except that afterward, we discovered that one of the leads was in the way of a planned incision (oops). The surgeon introduced himself and then asked if I was a med student. He said that since Jenny and I aren't in med yet, we had to leave. I don't really blame him since it was 28C by eight this morning and there were a lot of people in that room, which is one of the few with AC but it's still pretty touch-and-go. Good thing there were two other surgeries!

I went into another OR with Jason and Jenny went across the hall. In this room, we weren't sure what the surgery was going to be but since I'd just helped Jason in the other room, I got the leads ready and handed them to the anaesthesiologist so that he could put them where he wanted them. My contribution was very small - I put the pulse oximeter on the patient and helped hold his head forward while they fished around his back with a needle full of anaesthetic - but I think that if I keep doing these little useful things, the doctors will start to trust me to be helpful.

Once the cholecystectomy had begun, it was actually pretty hard to see. (I'm going to talk about guts now, so skip to the next paragraph if you're not okay with that.) I could hear and smell the cauterization, but the most interesting thing I could really see was how elastic the human body is! They don't stretch people like that in Grey's Anatomy, that's for sure. After a while, though - just as things were getting interesting - the heat and my less-than-substantial breakfast started to get to me. I didn't feel squeamish about what I was seeing, but my field of vision was definitely getting smaller and I felt faint. I wanted to keep watching, but I also didn't want to become "That gringa who passed out in the OR" so I stepped out. I'm pretty disappointed in myself, but I'll have eggs before going next time and hopefully things will go better.

So after learning how to set up leads, get the pulse oximeter ready and ask the doctors if I could help, I learned a whole pile of verbs, the rules for determining the gender of a noun and a few new words! My Spanish class was one-on-one today because the other two volunteers (John and Brianne) were at their placement. They came back today and said that they need more Spanish to be helpful, so they'll be joining me in the mornings again this week.

I felt the same way about the Spanish when I was in emerge this afternoon. When I volunteered in Edmonton, half of my job was making small talk with the patients and checking up on them to see if they were comfortable. Here, I can't do that! Even though I can ask, "¿Como estas?" I can't understand an answer that's more than two words long. When the doctor was trying to get the needle in the elderly man's back this morning, he was obviously in pain - but I don't know the words for "It's okay" or "You're doing great" or "Deep breaths" so all I could do was hold his hand. I tried the same thing with a pregnant woman who came in nauseated but smiling this afternoon, but when she started crying after we had the IV in, I didn't know how to ask her if there was anything I could do.

So the Spanish is definitely a priority so that I can at least bring comfort to the patients when I can't do anything medical. That being said, I learned lots of medical things today! Jason showed me how to take blood pressures, so Jenny and I practiced a little bit. He says that often the nurses will hand him a blank square of paper and a BP cuff, which means "Please take this patient's vitals and write them on this." (He doesn't speak much Spanish at all.) Unfortunately, there wasn't a cuff available in triage today - only one in the consult rooms and one in Shock, so we didn't do any vitals. We set up a lot of IVs, though! By the end of my three hours in emerge, I had learned how to pick the right bag (the nurses ask for Ringer, Salino or Dextrose), hang it with the infusion kit, rip the right tape for the nurses, catch some blood in a vial for the lab, get meds ready in syringes for the IV (even mixed ones!) and put the meds in!

It was a big day. I'm going to learn so much in the next seven weeks, and I think since estoy lista para trabajo duro para aprender, it won't be long before I'm genuinely helpful.