March 9, 2006

The rain befits the day. After a lazy morning breakfast, I headed on to the hospital for the day’s rotation. I went through both male and female medical wards again since they were beneficial last time. I saw another case of rheumatic heart disease, something that I was told to be rare. It seems that they don’t get many acute cases anymore but still see people presenting heart failure due to it. I also was asked to take a blood sample from one of the patients. I felt fairly comfortable doing so since I have plenty of experience from my experiments at work, but I was still nervous for some reason.

They gave me gloves and a syringe and we walked over to the patient. The man’s arm was emaciated and strikingly scrawny in the nurses’ constricting grip. There was no tourniquet available other than her two hands and it was at this moment I realized they were going to let me do this without cleaning the patient’s arm with alcohol. How many times have I witnessed the ugly abscesses caused by dirty injections? I’ve even met a kid teasingly referred to as Swimming pool because of the gaping hole left by such an abscess. After a quick cleaning I took the blood while the guy cried more than anyone I’ve ever seen. And that was that.

As I approach the end of the internship my mind turns more and more towards home and the tasks ahead of me. The time has come where I’m excited to return, but thoughts of leaving are accompanied by melancholy. Acclimating to this new environment hasn’t proven to be difficult. Two years in Mexico City has acquaintanced me to sprawling metropolises in developing countries, and every day the similarities grow between the two, making the differences more enjoyable. Ten weeks has been enough time to develop fledgling friendships, making the experience more enjoyable, and short enough to be a pleasant respite from life back home.