The spider in my room

The spider is an expected aquaintence as I enter my cabin each night. We share our room and in to a certain extent we have an understanding. I am wary of his size and his appearance, he his cautious about my intrudance in his former habitat. I guess we both are slightly scared of one another, however every night we have an unspoken understanding that for now we will be sharing the same habitat and will not intrude in one another´s space. This is not bad by all means. It´s nice to see some sort of familarity after all the randomness I experience every day. And yet, at 630 in the evening against the dark right corner of my front wall I expect to see him resting every single day.

On another note, I´ve had a pretty darn interesting week so far. I have now started to administer direct patient care to my patients without guidance (despite my beginner-intermediate spanish). Yesterday, we were interrupted during morning report by a lady who had all the signs of preeclampsia blood pressure in the 180´s who ultimately seized during labor making this the first eclampsia patient I have ever seen. Needless to say the delivery was a success and the baby that I delivered was a health baby boy.

I also, diagnosed my first patient with a new diagnosis of diabetes in clinic today. the patient had come in with a chief complaint of ¨being really thirsty¨ and after a random finger stick blood sugar level I was able to give him the diagnosis and start him on metformin therapy. There is a lot to been seen and learned at the clinic in that we see a full spectrum of patients as this is the only hospital in santiago. I´m definately excited about the upcoming weeks.

Theres not much to do in santiago, so today I decided to take the 40 minute boat ride across the lake to panachel to do some site seeing and maybe even some grocery shopping. Tommm the plans are to go horseback riding with a coworker who just finished PA school. Anyways, back to exploring this town.

adios