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| The hospital |
There are four volunteers here - myself, a retired respiratory physician (Mike), a Physicians Assistant student (Jennifer) and a pre-medical student (Allison) all from the States. We stay in a house in the back garden of the hospital, with a Bolivian couple and their two sons, all of whom speak excellent English after living in Canada for a time. They provide us with a hot lunch every day and we get our own evening meal, although they have plenty of food available for us to cook with.
Sadly the Bolivian couple have got slightly confused by my name and persisted in calling me 'Agnus' for the last few days. I worry that I've left it too late to correct them, so I feel like I'm back in primary 7 again.. The Americans caused conversational difficulties at first too - asking me questions by starting with "So in England, do you guys..". I kept answering with "Well in Scotland we..", but luckily didn't have to start asking them questions about Canada. They finally got the hint by Wednesday.
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| Our house at the back of the hospital |
The hospital itself is very small - about 30 beds (although I've only seen about 5 patients so far who actually are staying in the wards) and 10 different clinics - paediatrics, gastroenterology, surgery, gynaecology, dentistry, internal medicine, physiotherapist etc.
So far we haven't done a lot in the hospital; we are able to sit in on the clinics and watch the doctors. Most of them are very friendly but it's a very different teaching environment from the UK - as a student you stand in the corner and watch, rather than be interrogated by the doctors about the patient. Then once the patient has left the doctor might have a chat with you, although so far their favourite conversation has been 'Oh si, me gusta la pelicula corazon valiente mucho!' (I very much like the film Braveheart..)
There are seemingly scores of Bolivian medical students/interns at the hospital, so we have to choose wisely when we shadow a doctor or we end up being stuck in a room with a doctor, 4 or 5 bolivian students, a nurse, and a patient!
We also have the option of going into Cochabamba (about an hour away on a local minibus) to a clinic there where we can shadow doctors. This seems a bit better so far, since there are no Bolivian students there, and we have a bit more opportunity to get involved. I watched some surgery this morning, which started off seemingly as hygiene conscious as at home, until one of the surgeons mobile phone rang, and the nurse held it up to his ear so he could have a chat while stitching up the patient (who was wide awake despite having his gall bladder taken out! I'm still not entirely sure why he didn't have general anaesthetic..)
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| This is not the scene from the local surgery, but a slightly odd poster in the x-ray room. |
I like going into town, since we can ride the local bus. This morning our bus was gently caressed on the back by another rival bus. Since we were near our stop we filed out, expecting the drivers to have a heated discussion, but instead we were nearly hit by the other driver as he reversed out of our back bumper and overtook us! When not being hit, the bus gives me a chance to enjoy some quality Bolivian music, including a piece which sounded suspiciously like 'total eclipse of the heart' in Spanish, accompanied by the man behind me reading his Bible out loud to himself.
There are some peculiarities about Bolivian medicine. For example the doctors are much more brusque with their patients, and they have some unusual lifestyle advice -
"What weight were you before you got pregnant?" "80kg" "Ah, so you've always been a little fatty then?"
"Your sugar is dangerously high, and you may soon get diabetes. You should cut down your sugar intake in your diet. I recommend no more than one piece of fruit a day, since they are very sweet." (No mention of the 4 sugars Bolivians seem to take in their tea/coffee/coca!)
A patient came into the hospital who had had a broken leg. Post surgery her operation site had got badly infected and was oozing pus everywhere. The doctor has apparently been treating this dilemma by shoveling in brown sugar into her wound. He claims that she is now "much better!"
The spanish has gone well so far - conversations with the staff are very easy, and I've been able to follow most of what is going on. I was concerned at first that although I knew some spanish I wouldn't be able to understand the medical terms. I was obviously delighted when I found out that most of them are just english words with an 'a' or 'o' on the end! For example;
'gynaecologia', 'enterologia', 'clinico', 'diagnostico', and my current favourite - 'x-rayo'.
Interestingly, spending time with Americans I've found out that unlike the Bolivians who lengthen their words, they seem to shorten their words;
respiratory becomes 'respitory'. Aluminium becomes 'Aluminum' and Prednisolone (a drug) becomes Prednisone. I have yet to decide whether this makes Americans lazy or more efficient..
In general things are going well. I'm sure that within a couple of weeks we'll be able to get really involved in different things in the hospitals, and the spanish should be coming along nicely...
I hope everyone is well! It would be great to hear from people, although there is no address here apparently since Bolivian post is very unreliable. But feel free to give me some news in any other way!
