At Least I Can Pipette!

There wasn't much to do in emerge yesterday, so Jenny pretty much dropped me off at the lab and left me in the capable hands of Ivania. She brought me over to the microscope and asked (I think) if I knew any histology. She started pointing things out under the microscope and although things looked familiar, I had no idea what she was saying. After a few minutes, when my head was actually hurting from trying to pick up on any familiar words, I had to say "Lo siento, pero no entiendo mucho... Yo voy a regresar cuando hablo mas español." (I wanted to say "Sorry, I really don't understand. I'll come back when I speak more Spanish," but who knows how it actually came out.) Ivania, who is clearly a remarkable patient woman, just said something to the effect of, "No, no - we'll try something else!"

We went to another section of the lab with a tray of blood samples and a spectrophotometer. She stuck a micropipette in my hand, showed me the lab reqs (test and patient names written on signed scraps of paper) and we were off! I learned how to do tests for blood glucose, creatinine, bilirubin and TGO/TGP, whatever those are. It was hard at first to understand what she wanted because she spoke quickly and there are still plenty of useful verbs I don't know - like ask, change, know, put, take, etc. - but we got it together without major incident. I wrote myself some good notes about which reagents are needed for each test and what to press on the machine, so I think I can be of good use tomorrow.

The Spanish, though! In some ways, I've improved so much in the past ten days (only ten days?) but I didn't even know how to say, "Yes, I know Meagan! She's the one who told me about the program." (Instead it was, "¿Meagan? ¡Si! Estamos amigas en Canada...") Even so, the ladies in the lab were really patient and we were even able to joke around a bit - although I'm sure half of the laughter was really at my pathetic attempts to build sentences and everyone's general confusion. I don't know how much time I'll spend there once my Spanish is better because I'd really like to try peds or maternity, but I think the lab is a great place to start because I can actually contribute something and practice my Spanish at the same time.

PS - Sorry, I don't have any photos from the lab yesterday. You can always check out this week's album here, though!