The week before I returned to the Mazate for a few quick days of morning work. Unfortunately and relatively inexplicably, Sheila has insisted that my time spent in the hospital is limited to a maximum of three mornings a week, and the other two mornings I need to be up at the school. It’s kind of a bummer, since there’s not really anything for me to do all morning in tiny little Xejuyup, but it’s important to her and it gets me down in Mazate at least a little bit. It was very nice to return to the hospital, where I felt like I had been truly missed and was enthusiastically welcomed back. The hospital director had changed since I very first started spending time there, and I was a bit nervous about asking for official permission again. I’d kind of made a big deal about insisting that I be allowed to spend at least a few mornings a day there, and the thought occurred to me briefly the evening before I went to ask that I could be denied access. Quite the contrary, I ran into the director, Dr. Olivar, just as I entered the front doors and was earnestly welcomed back, quizzed with regards to why I’d been absent so long and encouraged to return to work ASAP. Needless to say, it made me feel quite good about the work I’d been doing before I left.
The most interesting case I saw during that last week of January was a young boy who’d fallen 30 feet out of a tree, head-first. Miraculously, he didn’t hit his head and was in perfect condition neurologically. That fortunate condition didn’t come without a cost, however, and the radius and ulna on both arms protruded from his skin, with wrists and hands jutting at bizarre angles towards his body. The poor boy was miserable, and his story was heartbreaking. As we quizzed him about who he was and what had happened, in order to test how well his brain was working, he explained that he’d climbed the tree in order to catch a squirrel. “My father’s left us, and my mom’s working in Guatemala,” he sobbed, “and my siblings are hungry. We were going to eat it.” Wow. Just about made a person want to cry, and activity usually discouraged in ER staff. Luckily, our Mazate traumatólogo (that’s orthopedic surgeon in Spanish, I think it’s a great name. Kind of like otorrinolaringólogo, which means Ear Nose and Throat Doctor) has connections with the docs at the National Hospital in Xela, where they have more resources available for poor patients. We cleaned him up very well, cast his arms in their peculiar angles and packaged him for transport.
Another crazy case was a man who came in with a disgusting, rotten cellulitis in his left leg. He claims that it’s been there for 10 years, although the concept of a person living with half of their lower body literally rotting away for 10 years is entirely otherworldly to me. His leg was hugely swollen, ulcerated and grey, bringing to mind an elephant who’d been hit by a car. The worst part was when I started placing a temporary bandage on his leg, just until he was transported to the surgery ward. He’d placed a tourniquet below his knee, and the doc asked me to take it off. Being the good little order-obeying soldier that I am, I did just as I was told. A literal fountain of blood spurted from an ulcer on the man’s shin, threatening to flood the ER with several liters of blood. Apparently this was the reason he’d chosen today as the day to report to the hospital: the ulcer had eaten through an artery, and un-tourniquetted produced massive hemorrhaging. Bummer I had to be the person to figure that out. Luckily I was observant enough to be wary of both the tourniquet and the leg in general and was careful to be very far off to the side before loosening the knot; I don’t think a speck of blood from the bright red flood touched me.
Both of those cases I was rather disappointed in myself for not having camera handy, and I think I’ll have to start bringing it.
The following week was dedicated to the eye docs, who were a very fun bunch. We saw a mountain of interesting ophthalmological pathologies, and impressed upon me how fortunate I was to be working with them. I don’t think a single one of the four eye docs here failed to tell me that I’d already seen more ophthalmology in this one week than they saw before starting residency. This time around they brought down a Yag laser, which I can best describe as a large apparatus which shoots laser beams into eyes, making blind people see again. If that’s not cool, I don’t know what is. It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t moderately considering ophthalmology as a specialty, although I know I’ll change my mind a minimum of six trillion times between now and picking my residency programs in four years.
On a different note, I had a very humorous experience with one of my students recently. One of my biggest challenges in any subject is teaching the kids how to pronounce words correctly, so I always try to find creative ways to explain pronunciation. Mostly this means relating parts of the English word to words they already know in Spanish – like explaining the month of March as “mar” (which means “sea”) + ch (the sound which people make to get your attention here. ) That way, it’s not just some goofy combination of sounds, but two parts which make a whole.
In my Segundo Basico classes we’re building vocabulary which relates to school – pencil, pen, desk, teacher, student, etc. I felt really lucky when I taught them the word “essay,” since I know they love watching Mexican telenovelas. Mexicans often refer to one another as “ese” (pronounced “essay”) so I explained the connection to them in class. “You already know how to pronounce this word perfectly,” I told them, “because you hear it on TV. “Essay” can be “ensayo,” or it can be a Mexican.” Made perfect sense to me.
On Friday, I assigned each student in the class one of our new school words, and had them make a big, illustrated flash card which I’ll use to drill the whole class on Monday. Little Otto Armando was assigned “essay,” and this is what he turned in at the end of the period:
A guy with a good sound system robbing two people at knifepoint. A Mexican.
I thought he was joking at first, until I saw the confusion at my laughter. Then I felt horrible, because I’d apparently done a poor job of explaining, and now I was embarrassing him. I explained myself again, this time choosing my words much more carefully, and sighed with relief as the bell rang.
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