Life and Liver

Hello All from a hot winter in Cochabamba,

Thought I would start you off with a joke (Cheesy Zara style), an embarrasing story and an interesting fact.

Fact: Mosquitoes prefer O blood so that is why I get bitten so much. Interesting eh?
Joke: A school teacher writes on a whiteboard the letters A-P-A-T-H-Y. One child turns to another and says "What does Aapathy mean?" and the other replied "I don´t know and I don´t care!" teehee.
Embarrasing Story: I went to ask one of the girls aged about 8 if she was embarrassed and instead asked her if she was pregnant! I think I was more embarrassed than she was when I realised what had happenned.

How are you all? Thank you very much for the lovely replies that I have had, they make me smile. It is Friday afternoon here and we have it off because it is Labour day so we only worked until twelve. Well I think that is what the Captain said to me, he spoke so fast and I couldn´t see his lips and so I will find out on Monday whether I was right or not! Oops.

I thought I would tell you a bit about the hospital. It is a small 25 bed hospital that is based around two parrellel corridors that interconnect. On one corridor there is outpatients, emergencies and peadiatrics and of the other there is Obs and Gynae, Surgery, Theatres and Medicine. It looks how you would expect a developing world hospital to look; run down, dark and old fashioned. Spoke to the Captain yesterday and he says we can take photos so I will hopefully be able to show you some. A member of the theatre staff took photos of a woman delivering the other day! Don´t worry mine won´t be that graphic.

I have been trying to be very proactive with my time, so as to learn and to fill time. On Monday I went into Paediatric Clinic and we had patient after patient come in with Hepatitis. They don´t bother finding out which type because it is expensive! I was feeling endless livers and was reminded of how last year here I had to eat liver and smiled and the fact they don´t buy it at the girls home anymore. When we get back to the girls home we eat their lunch for our tea and I sat down and took one look and realised it was liver! Luckily the pieces were small enough to swallow whole but Monday was definately liver day!

The rest of the week has been quite tough. The intern I was meant to be assigned today up until today just ignored me most of the time and gossiped about me to the doctors. I often can understand what they are saying which isn´t easy. Yesterday I was literally a ghost for the whole day and at the end of the day I burst into tears. However embarrassing this was it seems to have made a real difference. This morning was fantastic, I spent the whole morning busy and smiling. Next week the interns shift rotation so it could go pear shaped again.

This morning I was in theatre and saw a C section. Got to help examine the new born and got to do odd jobs around the theatre. Then I was changing dressings and assessing a woman in emergencies. The woman who had the C section had a large cyst removed. The cyst needs to be taken to a big lab across the city. The cyst is then but in two half broken bottles and then given to the relatives to take to across the city to the lab yuk.

I have discovered a new use for a catheter here. Use it as a tourniquet! This is what happens here, I don´t dare ask whether they have been used. They don´t look new and knowing the multiple uses of things here I should think the answer is yes.

I have just seen that Swine Flu has hit England. Only getting to an internet cafe once a week means I am out of touch with the news. It is a good lesson for me in not getting frustrated! The president of Bolivia is taking some extreme measures but I´m not sure if they will really filter down the system, we will wait and see.

Medicine is very different here in so many ways, here is an example. There is a poster in the peadiatric ward explaining to parents about respiratory infections. It has to go as far as explaining that breathing is what helps to keep us alive by getting oxygen into our bodies.

It is exam results on Tuesday so I will touch base on Tuesday with some good news hopefully. I have sat through some painful medical student exams here this week. The way everything works is so different. The idea of having finals with no practical exams seems crazy.

God Stuff:
Praise God that the dates for applying for a type of job I am thinking of applying for have been moved so I don´t have to make any big decisions until I am back home.
Praise God that today was different, please pray that it wasn´t just a one day thing and that the new intern next week will include me.
Praise God that my Spanish is improving and pray that it continues to.
I often wondered what significance coming out here last year was and now I see it was partly to have good relationships with Jon and Linda and the girls. To come home to them is fantastic, please thank God for them.
On one of my bad days this week I got on the bus to come home in a really bad mood. Kat has been with an amazing intern and I was struggling. I read James 1 and it put me in my place. I know that God loves me and that he is teaching me, moulding me and hopefully making me more mature.
I felt that it was right for me to go to the English speaking church on Sunday, it is less my style than the Spanish church but it felt right. At the end of the service a woman came up to me and it turned out she was visiting Cochabamba. She is English and her son lives in Kings Heath! I was able to chat to her and encourage her which was special.

Lots of Love

Zara