Hospital: Internal and Advice

Miércoles, 09-Julio-2014

Internal Medicine

The internal medicine ward doubles as the trauma ward so you can have very different patients lying next to each other. The internal medicine patients we saw today were definitely no where near trauma level and yet they were laying next to a couple post-opp patients. Our first patient was a 71 year old female who presents with kidney failure and anemia and has a history of chronic diabetes. She also has a weird heart beat, called an S3, where her heart goes "lub da-dub". Liz told us to listen for "ken tuc-ky" and it really helped! I leaned the four places you place the stethoscope in order to listen to your heart. There's also an S4 heart beat which sounds like "t-en nes-see". 

The next patient is a 95 year old male who presents with "old age". The chest X-ray indicated an infection growing from bottom up and around the different sections of the lungs. The doctors diagnosed him with "old age" and left it at that... We learned out what pulmonary fibrosis of the lungs sounds like - cracking sound. 

Liz: our US Med Student

Liz is freaking awesome!! She just finished her first year of medical school at UC Boulder and came to Peru with the June group and stayed for a couple more weeks with our group. My host family group (aka David's house) has lucked out SO much with who we have living with us. Ben was also a June fellow who stayed for 1 week and gave us the rundown for the program. Liz came for the 2nd week and she also had tips for us as well as her med student knowledge. Lastly we have the only doctor, Dr Franćois living in our house which means he traveled to La Merced with us and does everything with us!!

Anyways, the hospital was a little slow today so Erin, Aaron, Morgan, and I went with Liz to the hospital cafe and sat and talked for over an hour. We drank our coffee and talked through different diagnosis, what to expect in med school, what she thought of her time in Peru, and personal stuff. It was so fun to have her give us some insider knowledge and help us better understand the diseases we will encounter in the hospital and clinics over the next few weeks. I'm really hoping to go out to Colorado and visit her since she is an awesome friend to have in the medical world! She really gets the PA profession too and was so encouraging about it which was a nice change from hearing about med school applications constantly. 

Packing Up

I don't want to leave!! Yanińa, our host mom, is awesome. I love her sons Enso, Ramses, and Sebastian. The hospital provided so many more opportunities to see things than what we have in Hancayo. And the weather is freaking gorgeous! I absolutely loved working with the tribal communities and wish I could spend more time there. Unfortunately since our July group of fellows is so large, we had to split up our La Merced time in half. The fellows from Carlos's house will be arriving around 1pm which means we have to pack up our stuff and move out of the rooms so they can settle in. 

Zoologia

There were lots of interesting birds and a couple monkeys at the zoo. It was interesting to see them but at the same time it was sad to see how the animals we treated. They've caged all the animals up with little to no interaction. The setup reminded me of an early 1900s zoo. I guess after my Goat Training Class where we learned all about animal treatment I'm more aware of the conditions the animals live in. 

World Cup

Again, our plans revolved around the World Cup. Argentina and Netherlands play today in the semi-finals to see who will progress to the finals to go up against Germany. We went to San Ramón to a bar where Danel knew the owner. Turns out this "bar" is more of a resort considering it had two pools, a basketball court, and fantastic panorama views. What a great place to spend our last few hours in La Merced! Oh and Argentina won so Danel was beyond happy!

Bus to Huancayo

The 6:30pm bus left promptly and took just about 5 hours to travel back to Huancayo. I could feel the coldness creep back into my bones as we rose out of the warm jungle and back into the cold mountains. Time to pull out the sweatshirt again!