Peru Saga: alcohol and church

So don´t worry I had two dinners yesterday and I am not losing weight but I bought some apples to start getting at least some vitamins. Last night I got ready to go clubbing...however, I went to my friends house who invited me and she was shocked by what I was wearing (tshirt and jeans) She said that I needed a collared shirt and slacks so I dug my pants out of my pack and they were pretty wrinkled and then put on my polo type shirt that I used for work. It turns out that we weren´t going clubbing and that we were going to a party for her cousin that was graduating from nursing school. I thought that this was going to be alright with my dress. It turns out that the party was all of the graduating class and their parents and they were wearing suits and ties and that nobody else was meeting with us. So already sticking out as a white guy, I walked into the party being very underdressed. There were 400 eyes staring at me as we walked in.They also brought us dinner at 1100pm ( I had eaten right after I wrote the email last night) But I ate the pork and mash potatoes. Also then there was a toast, which I thought was going to be lemonade that wasn´t. It burned as I sipped it and made me feel a little funny. I instantly recognized my mistake and then asked the girl who invited me to drink it. It was a drink called Pisco Sour that had 40% alcohol. We ended up having a great time. It was like LDSBC prom but latin style and we danced until 3 am. At 2am there was something called La hora loca when a bunch of clowns came with balloon animals and masks to the dance. It was a little different. The greatest part was that all of the parents were also dancing with the 20 year olds at 3 am when we left. I told them how I didn´t even think my brothers and sisters would have made it that long never the less my parentsI also made a mistake and opened my mouth about the funny differences between our cultures. As latins are more passionate and show their emotions a lot more than we do (even more than mom). And how adults have stuffed animals on their beds and in their taxis with them is almost pathologic for borderline personalities in our culture. It is funny that I have culture shock after visiting all the places and cultures that I have seen. I don´t know if that sip of alcohol helped disinhibit me or if i just have diarrhea of the mouth but I realized after that they probably didn´t need to hear that.Luckily we had such a good time that was not the most memorable part of the night. I woke up this morning at 9 when my doc called me to see if I wanted to come to breakfast with his family. Afterwards he mentioned that their was an LDS church close by and I went to see if there was a meeting at 11 or at 1 so I could go home and change. It turns out that their meetings start at 8 and 10 and so I went to church in my t shirt and jeans from the suggestion of the elders. I met a bunch of young single adults and found out that the institute building is by my house and am going to go to class in the next week ( they have classes all day long and full time staff) and to their party on Friday. It turns out that there are 7 stakes here and a million people. Funny how that is a lot of mormons and I still haven´t met one in the hospital.After church I went home to find out there was no power and my room was baking so I took my book and went to the beach and fell asleep from feeling the effects from the night before. So I am a little baked right now. I am about to call home but I thought that I would write this stuff down before. I am disappointed that I only have a week and a half left as I am just overcoming my culture shock, feeling comfortable at the hospital, and getting to know the members.Such is lifeScott

Peruvian ER Report

March 6,One amputated finger of 13 boy (machete accident), 3 pedestrian accidents, one lady who fell on a fence shishkabob style, two guys with tar burns which meant scrubbing their skin almost off, 2 yo who cut his chin open, one old lady who cut her ankle open, and that is what I can remember. Half a coke for breakfast half a coke for lunch, 12 hours with no time to even sit and now some crackers for dinner and off to go clubbing with the interns. until tomorrow

Another crazy in day in a peruvian ER

Please let me know if you don´t want updates. It doesn´t hurt my feelings to take you off the list. Also I forgot to warn you that these emails are rated R for violence. The following is a little more of the sameI am starting to feel more and more comfortable with what I am doing. Today I worked hard for 12 hours. I started the day rounding on patients and writing all of the perscriptions for every patient in the trauma ward. They have to buy all of their supplies so this means along with medications I have to write how many syringes, IV bags, needles etc each patient needs. I feel like I am actually helping and part of the team...which is good since there are only two interns with little supervision to take care of the entire ER. Today I sutured a man who fell 2 stories, put braces on 3 people who were run over, cleaned wounds of people who were attacked by rotweilers (sp?) one of them was 2 year old boy. I also put some pampers on a guy who was encephalopathic from elevated ammonia levels from chronic cirrhosis of the liver.Also today another man died while I was giving him CPR. He came in blue with no heart rate. Some guy had shot him in the head. I took over doing chest compressions for the doctor and it almost looked like his heart was coming back from the monitor. We paused and took an EKG and there was no electric activity. It is a crazy feeling as you hear the ribs crushing underneath your hands every now and again. Reality hurts to when your hopes are dashed as you think that this guy might make it from what the monitor tells you. In the ER there is nothing to separate the patients so everyone sees everything. It was pretty traumatizing for the guy I just had sutured his head. The patient´s family was devastated and was wailing outside. The ER is so busy that you don´t have time to pause and realize that someone died as another patient asks for your help or comes in runover by a car. You would think that something like this would affect me but it didn´t at least not the way I thought it would.I came home and got a $2 haircut and some peruvian chinese food which is like nothing I have ever had before and now I am going to bed. Tomorrow is another day and I am going to party with some of the interns after work. BTW I have to keep track of my patients for school and felt like this is the easiest way. Sorry for the graphic details

Week one in Peru

A week has passed and it has been a whirl wind of an experience. We operated on a kid that was in the earthquake in Chile because he didn´t of insurance in Chile he came to Peru to be operated on. He sliced his foot open and unfortunately didn´t have adequate attention or antibiotics. he came to the ER and we opened his foot and it was filled with pus and necrosed tissue. It smelled horrible and we washed it out. We are waiting for the plastic surgeons to see if there is any saving of his foot. he is oonly 13 years old. His little toe is completely dead and most of the sole of his foot.Yesterday I also had to stitch up a man who is an epileptic and had been drinking. He had a seizure and was brought in. He then had a seizure and fell off his gurney. He split his head open and that is why I had to stitch him up. He then had another seizure as I was trying to put his stitches in. After 20 minutes he was finally stitched up.Also another guy cut his leg with a peice of glass and his calf muscle was sticking out of the wound. As I helped stitch him up, the doc was washing the wound and washed off the blood clot on a major vein. He bleed like crazy about a liter and we finally stitched him up and gave him a compression bandage. We were just happy that it wasn´t an artery.Another surgery was on a 4 yearold kid who thought he was superman and jumped out the window and sliced all of the tendons in his hand. Crazy kidsI was a human ventilator for a man that was run over by a car. Unfortunately the man passed away. It was the first time one of the patients that I cared for passed away and it was a pretty humbling experience as I had to question that if he would have died if he were in the U.S. or a hospital here that had more technology or at least more staff.On a happier note, I went to the movies with a bunch of the med students here. it was some romantic comedy that had the same actors from My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It was funny how some humor just doesn´t translate as I would laugh and they would have no clue and at parts that were so dumb in my book were so funny to them. It was funny because of the girls had lived in Philidelphia for a year and talked about how she didn´t hang out with people her age because they were so imature and then we went to the arcade to play video games while we waited for our movie to start. Also another funny thing about the culture is how adults love stuffed animals here and cartoon characters. Pretty funny.Hope everyone is happy at home. I took the day off today because I have been working 13 hour days and got sick from food.

Gun Shots, traffic accidents= good times

Hello Family,This has been a crazy couple of days here in Peru. Yesterday was my first night on call in ER here. The ER is mostly staffed by medical students who do most of the work because they do their internship during medical school. Any ways so I have been working mostly with them while in the ER. Every hour especially on the weekend people come in with gun shot wounds. I had to sew up and clean out a couple of these wounds. One of the guys I had to sew up was a drunk guy that was stabbed in the butt. I had to clean out his wound pretty well with iodine which made it bleed. After I sewed him up he started to develop a hematoma luckily we put pressure on it and it went down. The thing is he got up to fast after being on the table for too long and he then went down and fainted. We got him back up and everything was fine. I also had to sew up a couple of sliced feet and traffic accident people. I have lots of good supervision and help here. It is just sad to see how many people get shot here everyday. (These are in neighborhoods that are not close to where I am at. I am in a very safe place as a side note). It was a busy night and I am still recuperating. The most frustrating thing about this experience is that the people have to buy all of their supplies at an outside pharmacy after they are evaluated before we fix them. Because this is the hospital that serves the poor about 70% of the population, they can´t supply sterile gloves, iodine, gause, or suture. People are only charged $3 for hospital services. The doctor that I am working with is a really interesting guy who want to show me the best of peru. He takes me out to eat everyday at different restaurants and pays for me and the other medical students. Everyone here is shocked that I am LDS as they have never met an LDS person before and they are surprised that I don´t drink. I was pretty bored and then they all complained to me the next day about their hangovers and how they wished they hadn´t drank. I wanted to say that I wish that they hadn´t either because it was 5 hours of my life that I can´t get back.Anyways everything is good here. I hadn´t realized how horrible the earthquake was in Chile until the doc that I am working with bought me a news paper. Hope everyone is alright at homeScott

My ER rotation in Peru: Getting to Trujillo

Well the adventure has begun. It started with the flight. I was on the plane with all of the missionaries going to Peru. I also met one of Adam Barker´s friends from Orange County that was going to Colombia for NuSkin. He has to travel to Italy every month for his job and this was his first time to Latin America. I than sat by a Christian lady who was going to a conference in Atlanta for Christian colleges who told me all about her kids and their congenital and heridatary aortic stenosis. On the way to Peru I sat next to a peruvian woman who was telling me how to stay safe in latin america and how she has acromegaly and diabetes as does her father and how her step mother doesn´t allow him to eat for 7 days at a time. Lets just say that when people ask me what I am doing in Peru the flood gates open about their health and their personal lives.I got to Lima at 1 am and took a taxi that ripped me off to a hostel in an area where the peruvian lady said was safe. I woke up the next morning with 12 hours of doing whatever I wanted so I went and took a taxi to the main plaza where the Peruvian version of the white house was. They had a formal changing of the guards with a marching band and the president came out to see. The band was playing classical music and then played that song that Simon and Garfunkel revised. The cathedral next to the presidential palace had the remains of Francisco Pizarro. I thought it was interesting that such a notorious conquistador would be buried in a cathedral. (He murdered the chief of the Incas when he was giving him a peace offering) I then wandered the streets and was offered tatoos and piercings by 6 different people along with other things that would take away my temple recommend. I was walking around and a 40 year old Inca man started talking to me and asked me where I was from and when he found out about Utah he asked me about the church. He then wanted to show me around the ruins and wanted to practice his English even though we spoke entirely in Spanish. He then started touching my arm a lot and asked me about how the church felt about gay people. Anyways I felt really uncomfortable and he helped me get a taxi and then proceded to ask me for $3. I gave it to him and was happy to get into my taxi.The funny thing is that one of the best parts of the day was my taxi ride to the airport. The taxi driver was 34 and had 3 kids by two different women. He wasn´t educated but he and I talked about world politics, the injustice of poverty, and health care reform. He was fascinated about different cultures in Africa and Asia and asked me tons of questions about my experiences there. The cab ride was roughly 45 minutes and he told me that he was going to charge me the friend rate of $10 because of our conversation (this was much more less than the $30 the night before and so I gave him a tip. He gave me his number and told me that next time I am in Lima he wants me to come and eat at his house with his wife and kids. I told him that if he ever wanted to come to the U.S. that he could stay with mom and dad (I am just joking I told him he could stay at my house)I slept the whole trip to Trujillo on the plane (I wish I would had taken the bus as I would have gotten here sooner and cheaper) I went to a hostal and it was on a pedestrian street so the driver couldn´t take me there and when I got to the Hostal Americano it was closed. I walked around and found another hostel that was a little sketchy. I went and called the doc that I am working with at a local grocery store where there were 5 guys watching soccer. He came and picked me up and while I was waiting one of the guys who was younger than me talked to me about the mining industry, U.S. basketball, and politics. He asked me who the financial secretary to president obama was and I had no clue. When I mentioned names like Greenspan he corrected me. When Dr. Fernandez picked me up, we went to the hospital and I helped with sugery cleaning the wound of a guy who had his arm ripped off in a motor vehicle accident. We were getting it ready for the plastic surgeons to cover the wound with skin. Dr. Fernandez is a great guy and is really happy. However, his wife who is also a doctor calls to check up on him which he gets angry about. I can see why she does it as he took me and another doc out to dinner he was checking out all of the waitresses and making comments about them. I don´t think he is unfaithful but definitely has wandering eyes. Today I worked with one of the technicians taking out stitches, cleaning wounds, and follow up. Dr. Fernandez took me to lunch along with another med student from Peru. We went to the beach and went looking for housing for me. We had ceviche or raw seafood doused with lemon juice. It was really good and so far I am not sick. I am now staying in an old mansion build in the 1600´s in the center of the city with a balcony overlooking the yellow and blue colonial streets and an old church is across the street. I start working in the ER tomorrow and will probably spend the rest of my time there.I am healthy and happy and loving my white pantsScott

Tikalifornia

We went on an awesome bus ride yesterday first the tourist agency drove us to Guatemala city and dropped us off in a sketchy neighborhood and told us to go inside and not to leave and that the bus would come for us. I already had a good feeling about guatemala city and then we found a dead body. Not really. It was fine. I sat and finished my book about the guy from Brundi that mom gave me and that Dave and Michelle tried to give me for my birthday. It is a great book. We then hopped on the bus and the seats didn´t recline and the air conditioning was blasting. We sat on the bus for an hour before it finally left the station. Lets just say it wasn´t the best night sleep that we had had. This is also day 3 of wearing the same clothes and not showering because of our awesome travel schedule. The bus ride was 8 hours and we arrived in Flores Guatemala at 5 am. We took a taxi and told him that we wanted to go to Tikal today. He said what time and we said right now. So we dropped our bags off at a travel agency and went to Tikal with little sleep, smelling like roses, and no food for 24 hours. Never the less it was awesome because the clouds started to move out as we sat on top of a huge temple that over looked the forest and were able to see the tops of 5 temples poking through the canopy of the trees. For all of you nerds out there Tikal is featured in Star Wars where the Ewoks live. We met a father and son from Guatemala living in Utah during the day. The son just recieved his mission call to Spain and was spending one last trip with his dad. It is a small world. We also finally came back from Tikal and got a room overlooking the lake with a breeze. Finally showered and went to get food at a restaurant that took 1 hour for the food to come out. I also got myself an Guatemalan energy drink and now am living the dream. We are headed to Belize and off to Cancun tomorrow.