There is a hairy, dirty, fleabag dog that lives on the street right outside out apartment. He barks all night long, keeping us awake, and his fur is so long that we're pretty sure he can't see anything...but we love him. He welcomes us home every day by sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk and blocking the path. Every group so far has developed a special bond with the dog; Group 1 named him Molsen and Group 3 called him Shaggy. However, our group has topped it all. Henry and Paige tried for a week to convince Rachel to pet Shaggy...and she finally did. (She lives life on the edge.) It was disgusting, but Rachel has not yet gotten any diseases from the encounter.
Back to business...
During the day on Wednesday Paige got the chance to again scrub in at the Burn Center. She assisted in two more cleanings and got the chance to lay a skin graft with Dr. Romero's help. After tearing herself away at the agreed upon time of 1 pm, with Dr. Romero admonishing her to stay till they were done at 3, Paige headed back to the apartment to wait for the travel agent, Juan Carlos, to stop by and tidy up the remaining details of the coming weekend's trip to Uyuni. While waiting, Paige felt completely exhausted and ended up taking a nap from 3 to 6 and still woke up feeling wiped. All three of the group then ended up taking a 'semi-little-more-than-half-of-the-trip' celebration to Tuesdays (hooray American food!), the Bolivian's effort at an American restaurant loosely based on TGI Fridays. After having a pretty realistic dinner, Rachel and Paige went to the hospital for a night rotation. Paige went up to the OB/GYN ER to shadow Dr. Ferrel, but beforehand had to do battle with the scrub nurse who was extremely stingy with the few scrubs and boots she had remaining for the evening. After changing into scrubs, Paige watched a natural birth and 2 C-sections. Absolutely fantastic and well worth staying up to 1 am to go in and observe! Thursday morning brought bleary eyes and Paige feeling a little sick and tired out from the morning before. Pushing through it, as it was to be her last day in the Burn Center, Paige scrubbed in a final time and did 2 simple cleanings and set a femoral catheter in with 3 stitches. A great end to her stay at the Burn Center!
Henry recovered from his fish water illness and returned on Wednesday and Thursday to the Adult ER. On Wednesday, Henry helped insert 2 foley catheders and 3 nasogastric tubes. We are now confident that Henry could do either of these procedures on his own...with his eyes closed. Thursday was a slow day in the ER, but Henry still managed to find a way to help out. He watched Jorge take out stitches from a patient's nose, and then was told that he would get to remove stitches from the next patient who needed it. Immediately, Henry turned around to see another patient who was ready to have stitches removed from his stomach after having part of his colon resected. Henry stepped up to the plate and removed the stitches like a pro, all the while trying not to gag from the aweful smell of the man's "poop bag". Brave guy.
Rachel invited herself back to orthopaedic surgery on Wednesday, starting her morning by trying to convince a hospital employee to issue her surgical scrubs. After a 20 minute battle, Rachel won and headed into the OR. The ortho docs allowed Rachel to assist in the surgery, which resulted in Rachel's scrubs being soaked in blood, cleaning solution, and IV water. Both of the patient's knees were swollen and full of pus, and while the docs cut open the man's knees, Rachel sprayed 18 bags worth of IV fluid into the wounds to make sure they were clean. Gross, but fun. Not wanting to put up another battle for clean scrubs to enter another surgery, Rachel returned to the Adult ER to run an EKG. On Thursday, Rachel went back to surgery and didn't even have to fight for scrubs. In her first surgery, Rachel handed the doctors instruments as they cleaned up an infected leg wound from a previous ortho surgery. The docs remove part of the patients bone, cleaned the wound, and let Rachel bandage him back up. In hr second surgery, Rachel watched as a surgeon removed a growth from a patient's face that she swears looked EXACTLY like the scars on Edward Norton and Brad Pitt's hands in the movie Fight Club...though it is unlikely that the 92 year old woman was in fact a member of fight club. The surgeon offeed to let Rachel scrub in and help suture the wound. Afterwards, Rachel headed back downstairs only to be literally dragged away by three of the orthopaedists. They spent the next few hours in external consult looking over x-rays and diagnosing patients...and trying to convince Rachel to go dancing.
Tomorrow morning, we're off to Uyuni to visit the salt plains for the weekend.
**Pictures have finally been added to our previous blogs. We had technical difficulties until now.**
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