Day 20

Thursday

Today was surgery day. Now that I am the only volunteer I get to change IV bags and irrigate the incision site (as well as run around grabbing whatever they need from wherever) and do the dressings afterward. I'm hoping they'll let me scrub sometime and do the suction though! I am also working all over the hospital each day. I assist with dressings in the male ward and work with Dave in the lab. Tuesdays and Thursdays are surgery days so I am in the Theatre also. If surgeries go well and end early I help with dressings on Tuesdays and Thursdays, too, before going to the lab.
Dave is awesome because as bad as I want to learn the stuff he wants to teach. He isn't like most, he explains the processes of how to do things step by step. I like that! Even if it's something I've done a hundred times (like check blood sugar) it's nice to have someone show you and walk you through it the first time of how they like it done so you don't get reprimanded if there are differences in technique. The others are great too, they just don't teach it as thoroughly because they assume I've been through nursing courses. One guy even asked yesterday me how I was enjoying my clinical internship and I had to explain that I was not a nurse, but a volunteer from the U.S. with only Bachelor's degree in Biology. I like that they expect me to be perfect and do not baby me. My overseers in med school aren't going to sugarcoat everything baby me, they're going to expect me to be perfect the first time or ask questions and when I ask questions they're going to act like I'm dumb because nobody gets babied in the real world. Plus, it's MEDICINE. People's LIVES are in our hands, there is not much room for error. Techniques vary from program to program, hospital to hospital and person to person, yes. But I feel that being able to adapt quickly and learn the techniques used here has given me an advantage. I will be able to adapt even faster to techniques shown to me in other places. I appreciate the lack of coddling because it has caused me to only make “mistakes” (such as their way of capping a syringe) once and adapt quickly to using their techniques to accomplish tasks. I've made a point to only have to be shown something once and if it's something important and I've never seen it before I always ask then I try to always remember. I just don't want these people to think that I'm taking their time and their abilities for granted. They can teach me (and are teaching me) a lot if I will listen and learn and I'm trying to do just that. The above just sounded like I was being prideful and that's not how I mean it at all. I have an incredible opportunity here, I can't screw it up.
Like I said, Dave is great! He's so patient and always wants to be teaching me or showing me something. That's why time seems to be moving faster I think. I get to sit in the lab and help run tests or learn the principles of each test done there. If no one is in for lab work he lets me look at old slides he prepared or draws outlines for making sure donor blood is completely compatible to the recipient. Today, he let me make slides that had a urine sample and a urine sample containing blood on them then observe the differences. I had to look at the one without blood and identify epithelial cells and calcium oxalate crystals then look at the one with blood and identify the RBC (which was easy) and find the crystals and epithelial cells among the RBCs so that when we do a urinalysis I'll be able to determine whether there is blood in the urine or not and/or crystals. It was so cool to be able to see the difference in sizes, shape and structures of the epithelial cell vs. the red blood cells. Until they were on the slide together I didn't appreciate the size differences. Then we looked at blood smears and competed to see who could find neutrophils, basophils, etc. first. It was fun and I learned very fast (much faster and much better than I ever did in a school lab exercise) how to differentiate between the different components of blood. I also did my own hemoglobin test today on a little boy named Charles. We did surgery on Charles Tuesday...side story here:
We did surgery on him Tuesday. He had been hit by a car and his femur was displaced and detached from the epiphysis. Dr. Pale had to put the femur back into place and secure it with a steel plate and about six screws. Before the surgery the little boy was laying on the table wide awake and shaking while everyone was preparing for surgery around him. Nobody really gives any recognition to the patient laying there....except the nurse that does the “anesthesia” asked if he was cold, when he said “no” she told him to stop shaking. I felt so bad for him. I'd never seen a pediatric surgery...even in the states the youngest surgery was the organ harvest on a 20 something year old. So I sat next to him and started talking to him about his family (He's the baby of four brothers and three sisters, one sister's named Elizabeth and he thought it was crazy my little sister had the same name.) and school and super powers and stuff. He stopped shaking until the nurse brought the syringe of whatever they use to make them drowsy (I should ask...) and he got scared again. Nobody explains what they're putting into the people...So I told him it was the sleepy medicine that was coming to give him fun dreams and he got excited. He likes to have fun dreams about flying! The nurses and everyone kept looking at me like I was crazy and saying things in pidgin I didn't quite understand but I got the gist of. I don't understand the disregard for gentleness here, especially towards children. (This is where John Caleb says I'm “such a mom” and I roll my eyes and say “AM NOT!!”) ANYWAY...
He was excited to see me yesterday when I changed his drain bag and today when I was in the lab he started screaming when they changed his dressings...when I went to do his hemoglobin test he said he'd let me do it because I didn't hurt. That right there made my entire trip. One child has experienced gentleness at the touch of God's hand through mine.