Today was my one and only real clinical day at Vernaza. We came here and toured all of the units our first day, and then last week, we came to a little health fair here, but as for doing real nursing stuff, this will be my only day. I am not that sad about it though. I mean, it was great and all that, but I just like the community rotation with the kids and the mother/baby stuff so much more.
We taught a CPR class first thing to the auxiliaries (kind of like our CNAs in the U.S.) when we arrived and that was fun. The people here are just so fun to work with. Every day I realize more and more how much they are just like you and me, and at the same time, love them for their differences.
After the CPR class, we kind of got to choose where we wanted to go. I ended up going to the burn unit. I actually find burns probably one of the grossest and most painful looking things, but a lot of the other students had talked about how neat of experiences they had there, so I didn’t want to pansy out. We had to put on these plastic blue suits to enter the unit. The protection was great, the sweating under them and the plastic sticking to your skin was not so great, but what are you going to do? 
We saw a woman who had somehow spilled boiling milk on herself and had burns all down her arms and chest. The doctors were cleaning out her wounds and that was also a pretty nasty one. We also saw a man get skin grafts that had gotten in a motorcycle accident and had burns over most of his entire body, save luckily his face. I found myself reconfirming my anti-motorcycle feelings, and then I thought of Jerry Jolley who used to feel the same after his paramedic experiences, but is now Mr. Harley Davidson himself, and I decided not to make any final or rash judgments, but man it was nasty.
I did make one resolution though. I don’t mean to diss on the doctors down here because the same thing happens up in the good old U. S. of A. as well, and it is just as bad. As the doctors were working on these people, their faces were covered with a towel by the anesthesiologist so just in case they woke up or whatever they wouldn’t see everything happening and freak out (I don’t know how they wouldn’t have freaked out about what was happening to their bodies though even if they hadn’t seen it, but whatever) and I don’t know, it was like the doctors were sitting there working on the body, but it was like it wasn’t even a real person to them. And I think that is easy to do. I mean, in a way, you almost have to do it or mentally you wouldn’t be able to handle some of the stuff you have to do or see, but still I think that there must be a way to always remember that this person you are working on, isn’t just like a machine or a piece of meat (excuse the expression). So I challenged myself to always remember that—to always remember that each person I work with someone’s family member or loved one , and more, a child of our Heavenly Father, and therefore my own sister or brother. Looking at it from that perspective kind of changed things for me.
Tonight we had our last health fair here in Guayaquil. I helped teach the CPR class. I have sat through hours and hours of classes about CPR, but I don’t think it really sunk in until this trip. However, they change the ratios and rules about every other year, so I won’t get too comfortable. It was a lot of fun though and I always love to see how surprised people are by how tiring performing CPR is. After even just the first 5 cycles when you do another evaluation of how the patient is doing, everyone is sweating and tired. When we told them that you have to do it until the patient becomes conscious or the ambulance arrives at the scene some of them just about died saying, “That could be 3 hours!” Hopefully that was at least a little bit of an exaggeration.
We taught a CPR class first thing to the auxiliaries (kind of like our CNAs in the U.S.) when we arrived and that was fun. The people here are just so fun to work with. Every day I realize more and more how much they are just like you and me, and at the same time, love them for their differences.
After the CPR class, we kind of got to choose where we wanted to go. I ended up going to the burn unit. I actually find burns probably one of the grossest and most painful looking things, but a lot of the other students had talked about how neat of experiences they had there, so I didn’t want to pansy out. We had to put on these plastic blue suits to enter the unit. The protection was great, the sweating under them and the plastic sticking to your skin was not so great, but what are you going to do? We saw a woman who had somehow spilled boiling milk on herself and had burns all down her arms and chest. The doctors were cleaning out her wounds and that was also a pretty nasty one. We also saw a man get skin grafts that had gotten in a motorcycle accident and had burns over most of his entire body, save luckily his face. I found myself reconfirming my anti-motorcycle feelings, and then I thought of Jerry Jolley who used to feel the same after his paramedic experiences, but is now Mr. Harley Davidson himself, and I decided not to make any final or rash judgments, but man it was nasty.
I did make one resolution though. I don’t mean to diss on the doctors down here because the same thing happens up in the good old U. S. of A. as well, and it is just as bad. As the doctors were working on these people, their faces were covered with a towel by the anesthesiologist so just in case they woke up or whatever they wouldn’t see everything happening and freak out (I don’t know how they wouldn’t have freaked out about what was happening to their bodies though even if they hadn’t seen it, but whatever) and I don’t know, it was like the doctors were sitting there working on the body, but it was like it wasn’t even a real person to them. And I think that is easy to do. I mean, in a way, you almost have to do it or mentally you wouldn’t be able to handle some of the stuff you have to do or see, but still I think that there must be a way to always remember that this person you are working on, isn’t just like a machine or a piece of meat (excuse the expression). So I challenged myself to always remember that—to always remember that each person I work with someone’s family member or loved one , and more, a child of our Heavenly Father, and therefore my own sister or brother. Looking at it from that perspective kind of changed things for me.
Tonight we had our last health fair here in Guayaquil. I helped teach the CPR class. I have sat through hours and hours of classes about CPR, but I don’t think it really sunk in until this trip. However, they change the ratios and rules about every other year, so I won’t get too comfortable. It was a lot of fun though and I always love to see how surprised people are by how tiring performing CPR is. After even just the first 5 cycles when you do another evaluation of how the patient is doing, everyone is sweating and tired. When we told them that you have to do it until the patient becomes conscious or the ambulance arrives at the scene some of them just about died saying, “That could be 3 hours!” Hopefully that was at least a little bit of an exaggeration.
CPR video to be added soon!
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