Hospital Militar- Owned by the Ecuadorian Military, here they provide healthcare to members of the military and their families. It's one of the biggest hospitals in the city and probably the most modern. I was really impressed with their main operating room. I was with two other students, Julie and Hillary, under Dr. Vargas, a general surgeon. Dr. Vargas is a great doctor to be with, he asks us questions, involves us a lot is very energetic. He also speaks English and French, which can be very helpful not only because the fact that he can repeat things when we don't understand, but as a language student himself he knows the importance of speaking slowly.
 |
| View from the 8th floor of Hospital Militar |
We were in surgery Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; consult and patient rounds Tuesday and Thursday. The surgeries we saw were all really interesting. Take Monday for example: A 27 year old male was assaulted 8 days before by someone wanting to steal his car. He was stabbed (by what he claims was a broken bottle, although the wounds told us knife), perforating his stomach, diaphragm and left lung. They had already repaired the stomach and were operating on the diaphragm and lung that day. To find where the cut was in the lung, after opening him up, they inflated it through a tube in his mouth. The second surgery that day was a routine appendectomy that ended up being a rare case. The patient's colon was longer than normal and the excess swung over to the right side and attached to the abdominal wall, so basically the appendix was hidden and it took a long time for them to find it.
 |
| The main surgery room. The others weren't nearly as pretty. |
On Tuesday we watched consults in Dr. Vargas' office. I'm trying to remember if we saw anything other than hernias but I'm pretty sure that was it. One patient was a famous Ecuadorian soccer player who is in a pickle because the country that wants to buy him for mucho dinero doesn't know he has a slight hernia that eventually needs to be operated on. It was interesting to watch Dr. Vargas go over the options to him and his sports physician to get him treated AND traded, that is, to try and keep it all under wraps. That night we went out to a bar and salsa club in La Mariscal, and I learned a valuable lesson about taxis. When we headed home we stopped first to drop off the girls, which left just me in the car. My house is only about two minutes away by car, but even though it costs $4 to get to their street from La Mariscal (a good 3 or so miles away) it apparently costs $3 to get to my place. I've been screwed over before in this same situation but never by that much. I had 2 dollars and a twenty, so he had to scrounge around for change for a few minutes to break it. People here seem to despise twenty dollar bills because it's a dead end in terms of change. It's kind of annoying because that's all you'll get from an ATM, but you'll have to get change inside the bank or go to an upper-end place to break it. You could have $100 in your pocket, but if they're twenties you're as good as broke. And if you're looking for a $2 almuerzo you might as well have a pocket full of toilet paper (almuerzo means lunch, but more specific in that it's usually a soup starter followed by a main dish with fresh juice. Most hole-in-the-walls serve just one type of almuerzo for the day and nothing else). My family told me that the next time a taxi is trying to jip me just give him the normal rate and hop out of the car. They won't be motivated enough to chase after a gringo who only payed the actual price.
On Thursday the school payed for a buffet dinner and we all ate as a group. It was the first night back from 2 weeks in Chone for a lot of people. After dinner a Chiva bus picked us up from the buffet and took us around La Mariscal and Old Town for a few hours. I have to say, we were a pretty rowdy group. We stopped for a while in a park to crown the king and queen of the Chiva and to do a little Macarena. Afterwards I said goodbye to a lot of cool people, as all but a handful of us were leaving the next day, and hung out some more in La Mariscal.
 |
| So much food... |
 |
| The OSUers with Marisol, the Spanish teacher for the advanced class |
 |
| Hopping off for some dancing in the street |
I was probably the only one who made it to clinic the next day, and getting up was rough. Staying in bed sounded great but Friday is another surgery day at Militar so I didn't want to miss it, considering the lack of anything routine that whole week. It ended up being well worth it. I watched them remove pieces of infected sternum and costal cartilage over a man's heart. He had a valve bypass earlier and they had to cut through the sternum, which got infected later and became a risk for his heart.
The next day there was a pizza party with Dra. Alvear, the regional CFHI director, for the those who still hadn't left. Everyone went to Tapas y Vinos after, a restaurant where the name says it all, just unlimited appetizers and wine. It looked absolutely delicious but my buttons were still bursting from my pizza overdose so I saved the $20 (I prefer $2 meals anyway).
The next morning I met up with Andy and we walked around Parque Carolina before heading out to buy bus tickets for Chone at the Southern tip of the city. It was rock week in Quito, and a screamo-metal band was playing on a big stage in the middle of the park. Everyone not dressed in black mesh seemed a little disturbed by it all. After buying tickets the three OSU-ers walked around Old Town. I thought I had seen most of the Historic District but I was very wrong. I've got my work cut out for me when I get back from Chone in terms of sight-seeing. In La Plaza de San Francisco we watched a very impressive musical called Barrios Rebeldes about the revolution in Quito that brought freedom from Spain. It happened on August 2nd and Ecuador gained independence on August 10th. There was an orchestra and the music ranged from opera to rock. We hit up La Mariscal again, my fifth night in a row going out because of everyone leaving, and I slept like a rock.
On Sunday, my last day in Quito for 3 weeks, Andy and I rode the Teleferiqo up Mt. Pichincha, an active volcano on the west side of the city. I had gotten used to the altitude of Quito but once you start walking around up there it's like day 1 again. It doesn't go all the way up; there's still hours of hiking if you want to reach the summit of the volcano. We saw Andrés, my host sister's boyfriend, coming down after climbing up with his dad. He said it was a bad idea to start in the afternoon because almost everyday there's rain and lightning up there. So after Chone we're going to get up early one weekend and climb it with him. We ate shishkabobs from a hut on the mountain for lunch and discussed bullfighting and rodeos with some Brits. After watching “¿Quién quiere ser un millionario?” with my family I packed up for my three weeks on the coast.
No comments:
Post a Comment