I Feel Useful!

Today was a crazy day – I wasn’t bored for a second! We started with our first morning run since Jason left on Friday. It really wasn’t the same without him, but we promised that we’d keep it up. I lucked out when I got to the clinic at eight because Dr Harold’s door was open and none of the residents had arrived yet, so I got to go in and get started with him right away. We saw a lot of patients and I got to help quite a bit! I was only weighing, measuring and vital-signing for the most part, but I didn’t mind as much today because I feel like I’m getting closer to doing more. They seem to do mostly consults at the clinic, but I think I could do one of the basic ones – like the newborn checkup or the family planning visit – on my own now. Maybe next time I’ll get to do the paperwork!

Dr. Harold does spend a lot of time filling out forms and taking notes, but we also got a few more hands-on cases today. An older man came in to have his sonda Foley changed; I’d seen it done in emerge so I was able to gather the supplies we needed. Later, a woman came in for a check-up after having a c-section earlier this month. I got to hold her baby while Elio took her blood pressure, and then Roxana let me take the stitches out! It was a slightly more involved process than when I pulled my own stitches out of my pinkie toe a few summers ago, but the basic principle was the same. I was surprised by how large the incision was, both in terms of width and length. It was vertical, too, which seems to be a trend here.

Afterward, Roxana, Elio and another resident started asking my opinion on a big display they were planning about breastfeeding. Once I figured out what they were asking, I tossed out a couple of ideas and they seemed to like them. I was a little way at the first mention of a mural because I didn’t want to spend more time and money making posters at home in the evenings, but I’m looking forward to collaborating with the others on this particular project.

When I got to the hospital after lunch, I couldn’t believe how packed it was. There asn’t a free chair in the waiting room or a free bed in observation. I poked my head into Shock and saw three people transferring a woman from a gurney to a bed. She had an obviously broken jaw, lacerations on her arms and what looked like a broken ankle. The sheet she was on was really bloody, so I imagine she had some injuries to her abdomen as well. She, as well as the guy next to her, looked like they’d been in a car accident. John mentioned later that he’d heard something about a minibus collision; apparently the guy with cuts all over his face and hair matted down with blood was actually lucky because others had died at the scene. This was the first time I’d seen actual trauma patients at the hospital and while it was interesting (Jason would have jumped right in!) I couldn’t see a way to help without being totally in the way so I carried on to Clasificación. There were a few more traumas today, though, including a 20-something man who came in shirtless, handcuffed and drenched in blood. When I accompanied a patient to Observation later, there were a few police officers speaking to one of the patients there who must have been involved.

I stayed away from those dramatic cases, but I still had an eventful day in my usual section of emerge. I generally work with Esperanza and Carlos, but today there were two familiar nurses whose names I didn’t know. Luckily, one of them (Lilian, John later informed me) had seen me working with Carlos in Shock and knew what I could do. I spent three and a half hours taking vitals, running patients to Observation, giving injections, prepping meds aaaaand starting IVs! I still won’t do one unsupervised, but Lilian watched me to six today and I only missed one! They’re still a little spilly, but I’m working on it. I feel really good about my work today.