Mazatanego

My eyes are bleeding. Well no, not really. Yesterday Rudy, one of the guatemalan residents who works with me, invited me to take call with him at a public hospital located about 2 hours away in mazantango. Wow what an experience that was. Being a national hospital, they see tons of patients and I basically felt I was shuttling patients in and out of the emergency room in a jippy. I ended up seeing about 37 patients in a span of couple hours, and got tons of experience in enhancing my wound suturing skills. This hospital is just amazing and it was interesting to see how health care is delivered there in comparison to way we were taught. Often times, I felt that there was such a divide between the doctor and the patient, and just the mere fact that I took the time to listen seemed like a suprise to some of the patients. I´m not trying to bash the way guatemalan doctors by any means. To a certain extent, it´s all about the training and if i were in a guatemalan resident´s shoes being stuck with no guidance to take call in the adult ER and fend for myself, maybe I would be the same way. I definatley learned tons last night, and among the many things I saw I thought it was way cool that I saw ppl with various chronic disease presenting their condition for the very first time to any sort of primary care physician.

The chicken bus to mazantango sucked by the way... the music was even more undelightful.. but i digress.. i mean it could be worse. i could be sitting in a bus with 20 pregnant ladies. Now that would be my hell!

So what´s happening this weekend. Matt and I are headed off to quetezaltanago (XELA) to hike volcano tajamulco which is supposed to be the highest point in all of central america. I´t´s going to be a 2 day/1 night ordeal( camping etc= and we"re utilizing the services of a reputable backpacking tour company... so i´m definately stoked. Other than that, I have 2 more months left in the wonderful country of guatemala. What´s next? You´ll just have to wait and see. I think my next venture might incoroporate diving for a period of time.