iLe presento a su hijo hermoso!

Well to sum it up this was basically the BEST DAY EVER!!!! I had my first day in the hospital and got to help out on 2 births!!!! So my baby count is up to 2!!!!  The doctors at this hospital are incredibly welcoming and these next two weeks are bound to be amazing.
The first woman that was ready to give birth came in ready for her c-section.  The doctor actually let me scrub in and hold clamps and such!  It was absolutely wonderful and the young couple (married and both 20) were so adorable!  They had a son and still haven't chosen a name but I will always remember the both of them and how incredible the experience was!  During the c-section everyone in the OR was so relaxed and I laqughed as we listened to a Coldplay cd as per the doctor's request!
The next woman was only 19 years old and she came in all by herself this morning at 4am.  I was instructed on how to measure how dilated she was and upon doing so realized that she was completely dilated and ready to push!  She was clearly extremely scared though and crying and here in Mexico if a woman is not composed and is crying or screaming then the doctor will ont take her in to give birth.  They require that the woman is as calm as possible before they will give her the time of day.  So I spent the next 5 or so minutes helping her breathe and having her squeeze my hand to calm down.  When she got into the delivery room it hardly took one push and her beautiful baby girl was out!  It was au natural- a delivery without any sort of epidural or pitocin and the mama, Erika's mood completely changed as soon as she saw that she had a baby girl!  It was an incredibly moving experience and I spent the next hour tending to her before I left!
 

A few things that I noticed today include:
-They don't have (can't afford to have) pressure stockings for the patients down here so they instead tightly wrap tape around the patient's calves and feet. 
-Tegaderms don't exist down here- just gauze and tape over everything!
I had an absolutely wonderful day and feel like I'm on cloud nine and hope to have many more births to report tomorrow :)
Buenas noches!
Brigida

Holy hurricane batman!

This weekend was absolutely wonderful at las lagunas de Chacahua!  We left for this National Park on saturday morning and had to take about 1 1/2 hours worth of taxis to the lancha which was a boat that drove us through the lagoons to the lovely island of chicahua.  Chicahua is an island that was actually originally started by african people who landed there after escaping slavery.  So that was a much different looking Spanish-speaking crowd to mingle with.  Unfortunately there was a hurricane going on all weekend so not only were the beaches very torn up and dirty looking, but we never actually got to go on the beach!  But no worries I had TONS of fun meeting a few locals and lots of bummed out surfers and eating deliciously fresh-caught seafood!  I am happy to report that I have made it back safely now and free of any sort of illness ; ) While on the island I went over to meet a friend of my host dad's named Tim who is originally from South Africa and now lives in the house he built himself with his wife and 11yo son Sebastian.  Sebastian (though he is only 11) is already ranked as #14 in his age group of surfers world-wide!  It was wonderful spending all day saturday relaxing in his hammocks and talking about everything under the sun!
I'm off to the el Hospital Laperota tomorrow which is the newest hospital to Puerto and I can't wait to hopefully get to some much faster paced stuff! I hope to get back to posting  more frequently as well so see you soon!
Bee

A few Mexican tidbits..

There are seatbelts in every single car yet I did not see one being used until today (my 14 day here)
Breastfeeding is SO not private down here- mamas will do it in a taxi, beach, really anywhere without any worries!  Very relaxed and comfortable people down here and at least they are breastfeeding ;)
Only one glove is used (if ever) for very few medical tasks by any medical personnel
Blood is drawn with a syringe- butterflies don't exist!
All the prescription drugs are stored at the centros de salud and they are given freely!
The only vital signs that are taken in el centro are height, weight, blood pressure and blood glucose for diabetics- heart rate and respiratory rates do not apply here!
On a closing note, this morning I attended a breakfast celebration for all of the doctors who are now finished with their year of service.  I was SO incredibly proud that Dr. Argenis (who I LOVED working with last week in Manialtepec) won like EVERY big award there was for his class!
Off to see the lagoons at Chacagua this weekend!
 

Besitos
Bee

One Dengue crazy week...

Well this has been a crazy week, to say the least!  The first day at the clinic went pretty well though I was bored and frustrated about not doing much mama/baby stuff.  On tuesday after a long day of prenatal check-ups etc, I came home to quite the fiasco at my homestay.  Long story short, I was sick of their dogs as they were always nipping at me and just NOT nice in addition to a multitude of other things and so along with the couple who lived next to me, I moved out!  It was a lot of crappy drama that I for sure wish I had never been exposed to, but I am happy to report that I am now living safely and happily at a house much closer to my language school and the beach with a very nice young couple, Bety y Jeremy (who is a Hawaiian native) and their son Kaby (my mexican hijo :).  They are renting a cute little house for the month that I am here and I feel much safer and comfortable there with them!
In terms of clinical stuff this week wasall about the DENGUE!  Dengue (pronounced dang) is a sort of fever similar to Malaria that is transmitted through the bite of a mosquito and there is no cure for it.  While it can kill you, it is much more treatable when caught as early as possible.  Down here though, they just don't take it seriously though as we had 3 patients in one day come in miserable from it!  I did get some good practice because of this in terms of starting ivs and doing blood draws but it is quite terrifying to do with no gloves... As they were not seen as necessary by the nurse!  Other than all the dengue patients I did a lot of well-baby kind of checkups, PKU testing on newborns and a lot of teaching on diarrhea... LOVELY I know :)  though that is one heck of a problem down here especially with the kids!
The most stressful thing this week overall (other than the whole moving thing) was doing the first prenatal consults with 13, 16, and 17 yo girls.  They all were the same- they would come in normally with a friend giggling and not serious at all and they would leave crying as they had finally realized what was ahead of them.  It was very difficult to see these poor little girls get a grip of wha they had really gotten themselves into!

Dying to see some babies...

Well today was my first day at el centro de salud en Bajos de Chila and it was a decent day.  Chila has a much bigger centro than Manialtepec did and there were even more patients waiting to be seen as well.  Chila as a pueblo does not any have any sort of plumbing sytem or any runnign water.  Today my job was much different than last week as I was sent out with my friend Valeria to check the water condition in every house surrounding the clinic.  We were assisting with a project of el centro that is called "Patios Limpios" or clean patios.  This is a vector control project for the community that promotes the knowledge and control Dengue (a serious diseased carried by moscos).  So we would go to each house and ask to see where their water supply was (normally a large bucket or two) and check for larvae etc.  We then used a chart to note the condition of the patio- cleanliness, if there was orderliness to it, if there was a lot  of overgrowth of weeds etc.  Finally, of their water source had any larvae in it (which MOST of them had MANY of them) we instructed them to go to el centro to get a free tablet to put in there to kill and prevent more eggs from hatching in their, thus preventing more dengue and other illness-causing mosquitoes.
This task took most of the morning was interesting but pretty repetitive work.  It was very nice to go out and really meet the people in the pueblo though.  I did find out that next week I will be in the hospital de Puerto Escondido and I really hope to encounter much more women's health problems there and deliver me some babies!!

Ojala las olas!!

 This weekend wonderfully exciting from start to finish..  I joined the other medical students for a night out on friday by Zicatela (the famous beach for surfing) and boy do those meds students like to let loose!  I did enjoy myself and even got to learn a little bit of salsa dancing.  Saturday morning i was brutally awoken by my bed shaking back forth.. There was a minor earthquake happening!  No damage was done or anything but that sure is an odd way to woken up!  I was able to skype with the fam back at home and then made my way to the beach for a swim to cool off.  That night I went to watch the semi-finals basketball game of a friend of mine and had a lot of fun learning the different call-outs and rules for basketball down here!  It was also a great place for me to make some local friends :) 
Sunday was fairly uneventful as I spent most of the day at la Punta reading and studying my spanish.  Later on in the afternoon I headed to Zicatel to watch all of the crazy surfers out catching the INSANE waves (olas) last night.  My friend Jeremy has a waverunner and thankfully was out riding the waves and helping the surfers make it past the forceful current.  There is a very large population of Australians at this beach primarily for the surf and one of them, a young boy named Lucas, decided to take on the waves.  There was a huge crowd that gathered to watch the surf and after riding a few grat waves, Lucas got taken under hard and had a massive wave collapse on him.  We all watched and waited what seemed like forever for him to resurface and when he finally did, Jeremy was there to rescue him.  When he made it onto the beach he was coughing up massive amounts of foamy blood and said that he heard something pop hard in his chest and felt that he couldn't breathe out of his right lung.  I suspected he may have perforated his lung and that he should seek attention immediately.  He made it to the hospital and my diagnosis was correct!  I did receive word this morning that he is doing fine and has been discharged from the hospital.  I assume that though he is not to do arduous activities for a few weeks he will be back out on the surf by next week :)
Other than that it was a great weekend and I look forward to checking out a beautiful lagoon next weekend with some friends that I met.  I head to Bajos de Chila tomorrow to work at their centro de salud and I am hoping for much more hands on activity and many more babies... :)

What I have learned in Mexico so far...

There is no such thing as HIPPAA or patient confidentiality- you can bring whoever and however many people into the Dr.'s office with you that you want!  It would be incredibly rude to tell someone they could not have their famliy with them.  Also, there is no law saying that you must tell the patient everything.  For example- if a person is terminally ill and their family tells the Dr. that they do not want the patient to know his or her bad prognosis, it is not mandatory for the doctor to tell the patient.
The doctor is considered a bad doctor if he doesn't give the pt medicine when they come in for something.  For example if a pt came in clearly experiencing the flu virus and the doctor didn't give the pt antibiotics (though they are for bacteria not viruses) then it would not be likely that the pt would come back to the doctor.
There is a white cheese called queso fresco that they put on everything.  No exceptions.
The Oaxaquenos (oaxacan people) are very very poor, but some of the friendliest, laid-back people I have ever met.
Dogs are not meant for petting here, especially not ones on the street.  I truly think I am now developing a dog phobia because of it!
The bathroom in my room at my homestay has no mirror or toilet seat and my host mom says she doesn't find either of these things necessary...
Though the incidence of diabetes is EXTREMELY high down here (from all the corn they eat- 5-8 corn tortillas with EVERY meal) and therefore most people need to take extra care of their feet, a person would be brutally made fun of wearing closed-toe shoes.  Que mala.
For the most part, health care is free down here for most people.  Their health care system and programs are fairly comfusing but for the most part, anyone can receive medical care/treatment (i.e. meds, surgery etc.) most of the time for free.  There are of course many exceptions to this but overall they don't pay for majority of medical services unless they go to a private care provider.  For example, if a pregnant women is having a baby and wants to have a c-section, she is able to in the hospital for low or no cost however they perform vertical c-sections here.  If she wants to have her c-section done horizontally along her stomach like we do in America, she must pay to go to a private doctor or partera.
In order to receive health care the government does mandate that each person attends a certain number of information sessions/lectures/conferences on different health problems that they may encounter.  So for example, one week out of every month, eahc centro de salud spends the whole week giving a series of talks on things such as sexual health, hypertension, diabetes, breastfeeding and several other common topics that each person is required to come to and get their pass stamped.  This is great in that it is mandatory health education for people of all ages.  I found it very neat that at one of these talks given on breastfeeding, there were not only several pregnant women, but also women of all ages from teens to abuelas! 
The clinics generally her are run by teenagers in the front (not medically trained), sometimes a nurse in the front, depending on size of the centro, and one doctor.  The doctors here are required to do one year of "servicios sociales" (social service) immediately following med school.  Once they complete their year fo service they ar then "officially doctors".  All med students complete their year of servicios sociales in the area of family medicine/primary care and are primarily are the doctors that I will continue to be working with in the centros.
In terms of wildlife.. this is totally a tropical area!  My host family has (as pets) 2 loros (parrots), 4 dogs, 9- 8 day old puppies, 50+ chickens/roosters (which they use for chicken fighting...), but NO cats (thank god!).  Other animals commonly found in the yard however are birds of all kinds, iguanas (BIG LONG black ones!), and my least favorite due to their shrieking throught the night are cuijas (GECCOS!).  However the geccos are said to be good luck if the are hanging from your ceiling (so I guess I'm lucky..) and they ar really good for eating the moscos (mosquitoes).

Esta Cayendo el Cielo!

Well I wish I had a good reason for not being able to post yesterday.. My friends and I made the very bad decision of eating in the mercado tuesday night and I faced the repercussions THOROUGHLY yesterday!!  I thankfully brought some meds with me though and after getting 14 hours of sleep last night I was feeling fine this morning!  Unfortunately both of my friends were still very sick today and had to stay home from the clinics!

Yesterday and today in the clinic were pretty slow, only seeing 10-15 patients both days.  However,I can honestly say that my Spanish and medical knowledge have greatly increased & I am truly making the most of my time here :)

I did have quite the tragic experience this morning on my ride in a collectivo (the equivalence of a Supershuttle taxi in a corolla= VERY cheap) to el centro de salud.  The driver of my collectivo ran over a completely alive dog.  I believe the dog must have had an injured leg and was squatting on the side of the road and the driver decided to just run it over. While there are TONS of stray dogs EVERYWHERE down here, a dog is still a dog.  Not a single other person in the taxi flinched other than m.  I responded of course by tearing up immensely and vomiting out the window.  When I asked the doctor about it when i arrived he said that it wasn't that big of a deal... that there were dogs everywhere and that happened frequently.. EWWWWWW..

 So I decided that I was in need of an immense amount of beach therapy this afternoon and met my friend for a cold chelada to cure myself.

I feel the need to mention some wonderful food that I ahve had so far:

tacos dorados: look like a taquito but taste SOOO GOOD!!!!

caramBollo: basically starfruit- it grows on a tree in the yard de mi host family and it very refreshing!

cheladas: mexican beer mixed with a cup of lime juice and salt

fish tacos: SOOO YUMMY by the beach!!

Last but not least- "Esta cayendo el cielo"= "the sky is falling down" which is the equivalent to "it's raining cats and dogs" in the USA! It rains every day here around 6pm which is quite refreshing, although today esta cayendo el cielo the whole day!! Otherwise it is SOOOOOO HOT and HUMID! So I thoroughly enjoy my overhead fan while I'm falling asleep :)

Buenas noches!

Bee

Dear Dad, I'm DEF not gonna be a Doctor

Today a fairly relaxed in the clinic as we only saw about 12 patients as compared to the 40-60 normally! Regardless it was a phenomenal day of learning about the Mexican healthsystem for my partner in crime Valeria & I (SO excited to have a fellow RN student with me!!) and we especially enjoyed talking with the doctor at el centro who is only 24!! que joven!! he is currently serving his year of service for the country which is required before officially becoming a doctor (SO GREAT) and had so much great advice to share!

On the darker side note and to explain my title of the day.. While in my spanish lessons with the 3 other End year med students in my group, I was laughed/poked/belittled for my desire to be a nurse. After being asked to name an illness for the cardiac system of the body, replied CAD (coronary artery disease) a perfectly respectable answer. instead of agreeing, one of them laughed while the other said.. umm ok nursing school.. While wanted to give them a swift one to the you know where and really start a fight, decided to take the high road and simply explain to them exactly what CAD is and how it most definitely is a cardiac issue. Now if only there was a way to instruct med students on how not to be such (insert multiple explicates here) the hospitals would be a much happier and efficient place & nurses would truly RULE THE WORLD ;) just sayin..

Well all I have for you today & I hope to havve happuy baby news for you tomorrow :)

Off to my favorite cafecito in the meantime!

Buuenas noches
Bee

First Day en El Centro de Salud de Manialtepec

Well today has been an adventure for sure!  I woke up at 7 and had breakfast with the host family then headed out to the clinic, El Centro de Salud de Manialtepec, a 35 minute ride from where I am staying.  The taxi rides here are much differnt tho in that they are more of a caravan.  They all have signs for where in general they are heading and they will stop to cram as many as 8 people into the teeny tiny Toyota corollas that have got to be twice my age (LOVELY!!).  Regardless, they are very cheap ($13 pesos= $1.30US) and get me to where I need to go! Upon arriving to the 2 room centro de salud, I met Dr. Argenis Mata Hernandez who is the only doctor in town.  The front of the office was nto run by any sort of medical personnel, rather children from the town (ages 12-18).  There were no nurses at this particular clinic though I am told that they do exist in other clinics down here.  My partner Valeria adn I proceeded to spend the next few hours with the doctor as he saw all of the patients before he took his lunch.  I honest to goodness saw everything today from an entire family with scabies to older patients with diabetes and hypertension as well as several pregnant women (mujeres embarazadas).  I have now seen stitches removed, measured fundal heights and even assited with a cortisone shot to a woman's foot for her plantar fasciitis (down here its fascio plantar).  Based off of the overwhelming warm and welcoming people that I have worked with so far, I can say that I am definitely in a very safe and welcoming area of Mexico and will without a doubt be seeing some of the most fascinating things in my career in nursing.  

I am with a group of 10 other med students from Northwestern University who are pretty cool for the most part.. ew doctors ;) .. and we plan on heading down to the Cafecito for a little celebration of the 4th though I sure am missing the BBQ's and fireworks back home.  I will console myself with a quick swim in the beautiful ocean and an ice cold Chelada.  Hope you are all having a wonderful fourth back at home!

Cheers!

Bee

Takin on the waves!

This morning after having a wonderful breakfast with my host family, exploring the local mart "Super Che", having a brief tour and intro to the bus routes and important places en puerto, the CFHI local coordinator Soledad and her husband Roger (pronounced WAY differently down here) took us to la Punta for a beach bash! La Punta is at the southernmost part of beach in Puerto just past Zicatela (famous for its surfing)  while at la punta, Roger and my neighbor Jeremy (a Hawwaii native) taught us all how to surf! While my lack of balance sure did get the best of me out on the water, I had a total blast and can now at least say that have tried.  Tomorrow will be my first clinical day at un centro de salud en Manialtepec (a 30 min taxi ride from my homestay) and I look anxiously forward to it! Hope all of you back home have a wonderful & blessed 4th of July and will be sure to sport my navy blue scrubs ;)

Cheers!
Bridget

I Have Safely Arrived!

After a long day of travel, I have safely arrived to Puerto Escondido and it is BEAUTIFUL!  After a brief intro to the language school I was taken to my homestay and met my lovely host mama Sara Montero.  She is wonderful and does not speak a single word of English.. So I for sure have my work cut out for me!!  After she made something yummy for dinner, she showed me around the neighborhood which is "Sector Hidalgo" and more commonly known as el centro as it is pretty much central to everything.  Though the appearance of this city is quite unfortunate minus the gorgeous beachscapes, there sure us wifi everywhere!  So I should not have too much trouble keeping you all posted.  The other people in the group seem to be pretty friendly and I'll get to know them a little better tomorrow at our beach bash.  Off to get situated and catch some serious zzz's



Adios!
Bee

Watch out Mexico, Here I come!!

T-10 and I am putting the final touches on my packing.. Ok really I'm currently sitting on my suitcase praying that it will close!  Can't wait to set out on my trip leaving tomorrow morning at 6am! It'll be an early morning and I still have lots to do so so-long for now, I'll talk to you in PUERTO baby!!

xoxo,

Bee

T-30 hours to take-off!

I apologize in advance for my lack of knowledge in the area of Blogging.  But I hope that this will be a great way to keep all you lovely folks posted on my whereabouts and whoseywhatsits while in Puerto! I am SO beyond ecstatic to be heading out Saturday morning bright and early from DCA and I'm due in to Puerto around 3:30pm.  Now on to the packing... :)