First Day on the Job

Well, I suppose it's not technically a job. With my eating habits though, I could use one down here (Just kidding Mom and Dad, I'm doing fine on money), but it's just an internship. A huge draw to this program is this medical internship. Out of the 17 people we have here, 16 are pre-med, and 1 is...well...he has a beard. We have rotations at four different hospitals during the semester, with three weeks at each. So two mornings a week, I will make some sort of trek with my good friend, neighbor and hospital partner, Kelsey to a local public hospital in Puebla or Cholula.
Our first three weeks will be spent at Hospital Salubridad  in Cholula. It is a two bus journey there and two bus journey back and surprisingly, I think we may already have it down. Actually, that's a lie. The first day, on the way back, we took the first bus, got off a little early, continued to walk along the route, missed three passing buses, ended up deciding to walk the rest of the way, tried to cross some three lane highways, got some coffee, and finally made it back (this adventure being during physics). The second day, we took a taxi back to get in some last minute studying for a physics test. So...2-2 going there, 0-2 going back. We'll get the hang of it.
Anyways, the hospital. It is a public hospital that is connected to a clinic and it is always crowded. There are lines of people out on the street waiting to get into the clinic, but we have just been in the hospital so far. It is only one story and relatively small, but when we arrived, I felt like I had entered a maze and I was just plain nervous enough already. Immediately, I was paired with an intern in obstetrics  because I had expressed interest in that specialty. Kelsey was brought to Urgencias. My intern, Oscar, immediately starts showing me how to fill out patient forms and charts. I panicked a little, knowing that I would not be able to do that in English, let alone Spanish, but that's not really my role anyway, so I'm safe. I think. I followed him around a bit and then joined the other interns for breakfast. This was not necessarily how I wanted to spend my time, but they were very nice and the cafeteria had fruit and pan dulce, so there you go. Finally though, someone came in a notified us that a surgery was starting. C-section! Kelsey and I had a bit of a hard time finding where we could borrow surgical scrubs and let me tell you, the whole cap, booties, and mask thing was a little harder than I expected. We definitely had some nurses laughing at us, but they were very helpful.
The surgery was pretty incredible. We just stood near the feet of the woman and watched. It was so incredible watching the beginning of life. I don't know if I would ever get tired of that. The first breaths of the baby, all the beautifully nasty substances all over the place, and even the crying, are all just fantastic. Kelsey said the baby looked like Voldemort, and I suppose she had a point, but beautiful nonetheless, especially when it got cleaned up and dried off. The second best part about the moment was the fact that the operating room was filled with sounds of Bohemian Rapsody, Ke$ha's Your Love is my Drug, and many other classics. In fact, now that I think about it, there is just music in the background all over the hospital. By the sound of it, I think it is 91.3 which plays some great music from back home.
The doctors at the hospital are all very sweet and hilarious. They love talking to us and mostly joking with each other. It's pretty humorous to watch. One doctor was talking to us and pointed behind us saying, Dr. House es allí. Kelsey got halfway down the hall before we could call her back. They are all just very jolly, but actually are quite perplexed by our schooling system. Medical students down here enter Med school right after high school. Part of our explanation for why we do four years "in university" first is that we are exploring what we want to do. At this remark, one doctor pointed to a group of interns who were twenty years old and in their third year of medical school and was appalled that we were twenty and didn't know what we wanted to do. Ohhh man. If he only knew....
The second day was very similar. EXCEPT. Instead of watching a c-section of one baby, we watched one of twins! ¡Cesárea de gemelos! One boy and one girl. That was very cool. Two main differences: 1. The incision was horizontal instead of vertical which I thought was interesting. 2. Dido's White Flag was playing at the moment of birth. I suppose it was appropriate since this woman, once she woke up, was about to completely surrender her life to two little ones. Also, I was thinking to myself, I hope someone tells her what song was playing while her kids were born. I would definitely want to know.  I'm not too hopeful for that for her though.
So where do these experiences leave me? Well, marveling at life and God's creation.
Any new inspiration to be a doctor though? Give me a break, it's only been a week and...I'm only 20.

The first ND football game is today! We are all gearing up to watch it at a local casino, but it's definitely times like these I wish I could be a Notre Dame. Nevertheless, I plan to cheer my hardest, though, I have somehow lost my voice already and I don't know where it is. So we'll see how that pans out. Go Irish!


Mexpandable Waistlines

Fun fact for ya': The word "salsa" really just means sauce.  When we say "salsa" in the United States, we have something very specific in mind, but here, every sauce is salsa. In the grocery store, the sauce section is populated with bottles that say such things as "Salsa de Soy", "Salsa de Barbacoa", "Salsa Worchestershire." One of the fun things about going to restaurants around here is the medley of salsas they bring out to the table. For example, at  Tacos Israel:

So many choices! The one in the top right corner is what seems to me closest to Pico de Gallo.  The first time we went to Tacos Israel, I loaded my taco with that hoping to get my daily serving of vegetables. Moving on clockwise, some delicious creamy green salsa that I believe is based on avocados. This one was actually pretty spicy, but generally it's been seeming like one of the milder ones as well as one of my favorites. The other salsa verde is pretty delicious and very mild. To the left of it is the interesting onion and mushroom mixture that is also very spicy. Of course, limes are included with everything, but not technically a salsa. And the red one at the top could be titled Diablo as far as I'm concerned. 

I can't leave this edition of MW without mentioning Salsa Crema. Oh my it's delicious. It's basically just cream that is almost always available to throw on top of everything. Que rico. Overall, the salsas always make for some interesting and colorful additions to food plates.

I'll say, it's a good thing I'm getting so many bug bites. One might have said there won't be any of me to come back home after all these little critters have their say, but I think this section demonstrates how I'm hopefully finding a nice balance and making up for the lost chunks of flesh and blood.