¿tienes phobia?

my volunteer position with the hospital is pretty flexible. i've got eight weeks in total, and i'm starting my fourth week next monday. it's hard to believe how quickly it's going by. my first two weeks were with men's internal medicine. a bit of the run of the mill hospital life. hanging out, passing out pills, taking temperatures and chatting with the characters on the ward.

this last week was with minor surgeries. it's great because doctors have to be there and there's no where for them to hide so i'm seeing a lot. they don't have any nurses, just a guy named johnny that's a med student taking some time off to make some money. He's a fantastic guy though. We spend a fair amount of time chatting and working on his english. He showed me where i can find free lunch in the hospital if i bring my own spoon.

The first two or three hours of every day involves taking vital signs for the day's patients. I've learned a lot and can corral folks and get the info we need almost as well as johnny now. The rest of the day is watching as doctors meet with their patients evaluating either the need for surgery or their progress in recovery post-op. Lots of taking out stitches, though i'm not quite there yet. two or three times a week we've got minor operations. This is the toughest part for me and one of the reasons it's really good for me to be here.

The first day we had a woman with a hurnea. I was supposed to assist, handing gause and scalpels etc. but it was a bit much to take in and i had to sit every ten minutes or so. Cold sweats, pale in the face, the whole nine yards. Eek. Thankfully everybody's got a fantastic sense of humor and we could joke about it. Everybody loves talking about my phobia now though i really don't think it's that fair of a characterization. If i was afraid, i wouldn't be in the room. It's just the physiological response i get when people are cutting other people. I think that's perfectly normal. The second day was much better. A cute nine year old girl had a fibroid tumor on her arm, which they took out in a jiffy. Hopefully I'll be super tough next week.

After next week, I'll have to see what's next. I'm hoping to see a few births while i'm here so I may take a rotation on neonatology, but I'm really curious about the pediatric ward here and the challenges of the E.R.