First: my clinical rotation. Last week I was technically assigned to volunteer at an orphanage but due to a miscommunication and the fact that I spent two days for my first attempt to climb Huayna Potosí (my next post will talk more about that trip), I didn't end up being able to make it to the orphanage, and instead went to this week's rotation, Surgery, a day early.
I've been shadowing Dr. Galindo, a general pediatric surgeon who works in El Hospital del Niño and who has lots of experience in pediatric surgery (he even went to Stanford for a few weeks to shadow one of their surgeons). As he's just general pediatrics he does a lot of routine surgeries, so the rotation did get a bit repetitive at times, although as it was really my first exposure to surgery I found it extremely fascinating. On Friday we saw two separate cases, a total of four surgeries. Two involved young boys who had undescended testicles which needed to be surgically moved, as without this procedure their risk of developing testicular cancer drastically increases and their fertility drastically decreases. The other two that we saw on Friday were hernias (where a portion of an organ breaks out through the abdominal wall and needs to be surgically replaced). As you can see in the above picture, we were allowed to be extremely close to the surgery and got a really excellent view. I will admit, during the first operation I got a bit queasy (I'd never really seen anything like it before) but ever since I've felt perfectly fine during all of the surgeries, and this experience has helped me to realize how incredibly complicated, fascinating and impressive the human body really is.
On monday I actually scrubbed in and assisted in surgery, something that I never would've in 100 years been able to do in the US. The surgery was a colostomy, which is a procedure in which a semi-permanent opening is made in the patients side that leads directly to the large intestine (colon) to create a new method to pass excrement. Often this procedure is used for colon cancer patients who have had a part of their colon removed and thus can't pass waste the normal way. In this particular case the patient was a baby girl who had been born with a deformation -- she was missing an anus. Thus as a temporary fix until she could have another operation to give her an anus, we performed a colostomy. The truth is, I really didn't do anything that I could've messed up -- all I did was hold some of the tools that held open the incision and cut the surgeon's sutures. While basically anyone with two hands could do what I did, I still felt extremely useful as in every single surgery there is a trained nurse who does exactly what I did.
I also got a chance to witness surgery for an arm that was broken at the elbow and saw the doctors place the metal rods to fix it, as well as a burn victim, who underwent a surgery involving a skin graft. I really did find surgery fascinating and think it would be a really interesting profession, but I'm still not quite sure that it's for me. While I haven't had much experience with surgery in the States, here in Bolivia, Dr. Galindo didn't have much interaction with the patients that he operated on. In fact, it seemed like it was almost easy to forget that the patient on the operating table was actually a live human being. I've definitely realized that in whatever profession I decide to pursue (even if it's not medical related) I really do want to be able to form relationships with people and have consistent human interaction.
Last weekend was a good one -- I finally stayed in La Paz (or at least not far from it) instead of taking a trip to some exotic location, which ended up being very nice. Friday night, a great friend of mine from Princeton, Allison Vise, who lived in Forbes with me and had been in Bolivia for 8 weeks came back to La Paz to spend her last night before heading back to the States. She had been in the south, in the city of Tarija, for the past four weeks, and it was great to reunite with a familiar face and someone who knew me as Whitaker and not Jeff/Jefferson. On Saturday we checked out La Entrada Folklórica Universitaria, which is an annual folk parade that occurs in La Paz on the last saturday of July. The parade lasts basically all day and includes tons of university students from all across Bolivia that each have their own unique costumes and traditional Bolivian dances. The purpose seems to be to make sure that the nation doesn't forget their cultural heritage. It was very cool to see the city united around it's culture and dance.
The photos of this (and Sunday's day trip to "the Devil's Molar", a rock formation outside of La Paz) can be seen HERE.
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