to the hilt

Let me give you a little insight on life in international missionary medicine:  I have a very difficult time picking which amazing, crazy, breathtaking, heart wrenching, frightening, or comical event to post... there is much too much going on, too much I'm learning and seeing and experiencing to be able to summarize in a few pictures and a few paragraphs.  Please know that my experience here, my life this past 6 weeks, has been far more exciting than this blog gives it credit.

I'll try my best to give a "cliff notes" summary of my past few days:

Saturday:  Day off...glorious!  Travelled west to Banos, a little hippy mountain town with streets lined with artisan shops, internet cafes, and replicas of the Virgin de Aguas Santas (Holy water?  looked more like algae infested bath water that would likely give 

you a good case of pseudomonas otitis).

  

My dear friend Sara came along...she's a Swiss nurse who's here at Hospital Vozandes for 8 months.  She's delightful, with her 

charming attitude and constant desire for adventure and fun (she even hosted a Viva Suisa! Swiss independence day party last week).  Highlights of the day?  A huge rainstorm that hit just as we were hiking the foothills of Volcan Tungurahua above Banos, taking a break at a restaurant/ resort overlooking the mountains and the entire town, a post-hiking meal of "cuy" (aka. guinea pig) for lunch! (tastes like salty chicken, but don't worry, I've heard it has no cholesterol), and in the afternoon, when the storm cleared, watching Tungurahua (volcano above Banos that erupted last Friday) spew out ash and smoke.  Needless to say, we both slept the whole way home on the bus.

Sunday:  On call.  And it was a rough 30 hours.  But at least there's never a dull moment, and no lack of variety in the patients we see.  Por ejemplo...Man comes in complaining of a bite on his hand... pulls out a giant jelly jar with the suspect.  A very large, very alive tarantula that had chomped his hand while he was buying bananas.  He was rather offended when I asked if he wanted us to call someone to come get the tarantula (a friend of Dr. Brice is a spider expert)... the patient wanted to take it home with him! 

A man was brought in by ambulance in the evening after falling from a waterfall.  He was cascade trekking with his daughter and friends and slipped, falling about 4 meters.  Surprisingly his only injury was his upper arm.  His humerus was broken in 3 pieces...it was an impressive broken arm! We took him for emergent surgery and found the radial nerve was overlying the splintered end of the bone.  We put a plate in his arm to help it heal, but the nerve damage will hopefully partially recover with time.  Besides those, we had 2 women in labor (one delivered at 1am), and a strangulated hernia that we took for (yet another) emergency surgery.  I can't complain of being tired though-- my resident was on call all weekend and slept all of 2 hours or so the whole time.  I took over for him in the middle of stitching up post-delivery lacerations because his vision started going blurry from lack of sleep.  Someone needs to create some work hour regulations here!