For the past two weeks I have been working in clinics. This week they moved me, and two others, to Hospital Civil. There are four general places there: surgery, intensive care, emergency, and gynecology. The last two days Kirstin and I have been in surgery. We start the first hour with the residents as they do rounds on the post-surgery patients. After, we head to the surgical rooms to watch the surgeries. The doctors are very friendly, patient, and work to help you understand what is going on. The rooms are always full of doctors, nurses, students, and others to talk to.
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| Kirstin and I all scrubbed for surgery |
The first surgery we saw was of an 11 year old girl. She had a fistula just above her right ear. The doctors inserted a catheter, stitched the fistula to the catheter, and melted/cut it out.
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| Fistula removal in process |
The second surgery was for a 78 year old woman. She had a hip replacement some years back but the metal inserts had become disconnected from her leg. The doctors went in, pulled out the old and put in new plates. It takes a lot of work to do that! The doctors had a hard time putting in new plates because they could not get them to fit just right.
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| Burning/cutting in to the femur |
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| That would be her femur |
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| Screwing it all down |
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| Tools of the trade: screwdriver, hammer, wicked looking wrench |
Today they operated on a 50 year old man. His radius was shorter than his ulna due to a past accident and as a result he did not have full motion of his wrist. The doctors cut into his side, took a piece of bone from his ribs, and after braking the ulna placed the rib bone piece into his arm. They then screwed in a metal plate to hold it all together. After his arm was stitched together they screwed a joint into his arm and hand (through the skin!) to prevent him from being able to move it. They said they would not remove it for two months.
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| Putting his ulna back together |
On a slightly less grotesque note: Oaxaca is getting ready for the Gualaguetza! There is now a whole street set up with circus rides and food stalls!
I wonder how sanitary that drill is.
ReplyDeleteyo no se
ReplyDeleteJason - I was thinking the exact same thing. Isn't that the drill they used to hang the pictures in the waiting room? I had a similar operation on my scaphoid bone in my wrist where they took a hunk of bone from my hip. They asked me how 'out' I wanted to be during the procedure. I said that I didn't want to remember anything. Thankfully I didn't.
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