Work, work

After a weekend full of excitement, it's been a busy week in the hospital. I set a new record for number of surgeries in one day one Monday with 8, then subsequently one-upped myself on Wednesday with 9. These were no more than 12 hour shifts too, I might add.

It's a little different here than the states, needless to say, and I've found myself a little frustrated with some of the differences and a little relieved at some of the others. I've come across some interesting cases here including a fluke inhabiting the bile duct, a set of triplets today, a horrible necrotic reaction to an NSAID injection and a horrible case of necrotizing fasciitis following a hematoma caused by a fairly innocuous fall against a table. (my apologies to the non-medical folks)

I was expecting to be doing a little more hands-on work, but there are a good number of other students and residents around in this hospital. Occasionally I'll get to first-assist in a surgery, but there's a lot of watching, cutting sutures and retracting while some one else is doing the real work. All in good time I suppose. The other students are really nice and pleasant to work with. I usually take a little time to help them with dressing changes on the wards, but don't really have a whole lot to offer.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday with the pediatric surgeon and saw a few good cases. The most common stuff here in kids includes hernias, ankyloglossia, cryptorchidism and hydatid cysts from parasites. We operated on the former three and saw the latter a few times as a consult. It was a nice change of pace seeing kids in clinic. The pediatric surgeon gets teased for being not only a surgeon who operates on children, but a surgeon close to the size of his patients, but he takes it well and is overall a really great guy. One of the most important qualities for an attending is a willingness to teach and he excels at this.

I met up with an American kid last night whom I had met last weekend at the discoteca. I didn't know much about him, but it turns out he's a seriously committed Christian but has a much different path than mine. He had a pretty great story of coming to Christ and encouraged me in a lot of ways. We share a lot of similar beliefs and both have a desire/calling to do our small part to bring a little more love into the world, particularly the developing world. It was kind of funny because earlier in the day I had spoken with a good friend who mentioned he was praying that I would find community.

I'm currently waiting for a call from a group of expats who are here volunteering at an orphanage. We're planning to probably go out dancing tonight and then head out to the jungle town of San Ramon for the weekend. More on the later.