Getting our hands dirty

This has been a great week so far, and I know it is only Tuesday; however, yesterday and today were packed with learning and seeing medicine in action, and all three of us are definitely excited for what is to come for the rest of our time here. Unfortunately there wasn´t really a good time to take pictures yesterday or today, but I will try to get some later this week and get them on here asap.

Yesterday, we spent the morning at the government clinic in Duran, in an area called Orames Gonzales. It was originally mostly a maternity clinic, but it has now expanded into a huge facility with pediatrics, dentistry, emergency medicine, family medicine, and obstetrics. The three of us split up, and shadowed three different physicians. Matt followed a family med doctor and got to help with physicial examinations for various problems...but he ended up seeing mostly respiratory issues, which are common here due to the dust that is constantly in the air in these impoverished communities. Jeff got to follow a pediatrican and saw everything from babies who were literally only 12 hours old, to school aged children.

I got to follow an obstetrician, and not shockingly, I loved every second of it. To those of my friends who keep telling me they think I will end up as an obgyn, I kind of think you are right. I saw women who were anywhere from 3 months to 9 months pregnant. When I first got to the obstetrics room, there was a young woman who was having terrible labor pains, and when I heard the doctor ask her date of birth, I thought she said something in the 1990s but I assumed 1990, which would have made the girl 19. However, I was wrong...when I asked a few minutes later, I realized she was 13 (!!!!!). It sounds like it is extremely common for girls who are 12 and 13 years old to get pregnant due to the lack of education about birth control methods, as well as for women who are upwards of 40 to get pregnant with their 8th or 9th child. I know that unplanned pregnancies are common in young women in the US, but I have to be honest that the youngest pregnant person I´ve seen was probably 16...for some reason, age 13 came as a real shock! Anyway, it was great to help out with the examinations and I look forward to returning next week.

Today, we got up early and headed out to the hospital where Matt´s host dad works - the government-run social security hospital. He is the chief of intenal medicine so we got to spend some time learning about the 15 or so patients they had in the ICU, and then he took us down to the emergency department and we met a med student from the University of Guayaquil named Cynthia who spent the rest of the day showing us around and introducing us to patients, doctors, and other students. She is currently working with the department of cardiothoracic surgery, so she asked us to come and scrub in on a surgery on Thursday morning! All of us are really excited about it - the doctors are removing a lung from a patient with metastatic lung cancer, and we got to see the xrays and cat scans today to give us an idea of what the cancer looks like right now. Obviously I won´t be getting any pictures but this will be the first surgery I have physicially scrubbed in for and I´m really excited about it.

Tomorrow we have a crazy day planned - from osteopathic treatments in Duran in the morning to spanish lessons in the afternoon to an evening shift at the social security hospital. More to come soon!