Jen's Uber-late post of the week - Tuesday 6.23.09

Jen- Today was my first day on Peds rotation. I sadly missed my last day on OB since I was sick, yet again. Thankfully today I am feeling much better, just in time to help sick kids in pediatric ER. Since it is winter here it seems like everyone has the flu or some sort of cold. I spent the first part of the morning in the PICU listening to the medical students go through rounds with their attending, Dr. Monroy. That took about 30-45 minutes. Rounds didn’t take too long since there were only four patients, all of which Celia has mentioned in previous blogs. The PICU contained one girl with ‘folklores intoxicacion’, one with seizures, and another with sepsis, and a little boy with an orbital fracture. After rounds I went to Dr. Monroy’s presentation concerning different ways which ventilators aid patients. It was very interesting and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I understood most of what he was talking about. At around 10:30 I made my way down to Pediatric ER. I was expecting lots of action and excitement since I had never been exposed to an ER before. I was a little bit off in my assumption. I saw probably 3 patients in an hour and a half. One baby with low Hematocrit that ended up getting some whole blood, and two kids with the flu. I think that tomorrow the ER should be a little more crowded since tonight is the festival de San Juan, which is supposedly the coldest day of the year. After dinner we decided to go out in search of fun and festivities in honor of San Juan. We ended up walking for 45 minutes around Cochabamba and Hospital Viedma in search of a party that we were invited to. After stumbling across a few renegade kids shooting off fireworks and a sparsely attended cultural dance-off in a plaza, we decided to head home.