One Week Down

It is impossible for me to believe that a full week has past since I’ve been here. In some ways it seems like I arrived in Bolivia yesterday but in others it feels like I’ve been here for years. On my run today I was talking to my friend Ben about how quickly we all became accustomed to life in the guesthouse and to the customs of the Bolivians. They seem already ingrained in me and I am quickly disconnecting from America and our fast pace lives and the constant stress we put ourselves under. Down here things just seem simpler. You wake up, you read your task for the day and then you do whatever is expected of you. Even within the schedule though there is so much room for freedom. The schedule will merely say “Hospital” but the hospital is a large place and the opportunities within this guideline are endless. Wednesday I spent the day in the hospital and for me this meant observing an American Internal Medicine Doctor as he evaluated patients throughout the morning. After a long lunch I returned to the hospital, which is a mere 100 feet from the guesthouse and spent the afternoon hanging out in the Emergency Room. This mostly consisted of folding gauze pads with a nursing student from La Paz who spoke broken English. As we folded we would talk and she would correct my Spanish and I would correct her English and we would pass the dictionary back and forth until our sentences were perfect.

Near the end of the day an elderly Quechuan woman arrived in the ER with a tumor on her cheek. She was immediately taken to surgery to remove the tumor and given the lack of laws concerning hospitals here I was able to observe the surgery by simply asking “Puedo observar?” and changing into a new set of scrubs. Watching surgery is incredible to me; To watch the doctor cut so fearlessly into the skin and then, after extracting the tumor, so nimbly sew the raw square inch of flesh back into one neat scar was nothing but extraordinary.

Thursday was feriada in Bolivia, meaning holiday. From my understanding it is kind of like the New Year and the Quechuans celebrate by burning fruits and vegetables in the mountains. For us it meant hosting a free medical clinic at a church in Vinto. This was one of my favorite mornings so far. I spent a portion of the time taking vital signs (blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, etc) but I spent most of the time interviewing patients about their medical history. This is by far the biggest challenge I have faced as I did all of this solely in Spanish. My medical Spanish is definitely improving quickly and I can now proudly say that I know the word for Gall Bladder. The guesthouse decided to use the feriada as an excuse to celebrate Christmas (because it is winter here after all). Those that didn’t go to the clinic spent the day making Christmas cookies and decorating the living room complete with a makeshift Christmas tree, lights hung around, garland, wreaths, and paper snowflakes. We had a lovely candle lit family dinner of roasted chicken and mashed potatoes as Charlie Brown Christmas played softly in the background.

Friday I spent the morning in the clinic in Cochabamba and the afternoon in the plaza with the glue sniffing community. One of the families living in the plaza has a 20 month year old little boy named Eric and I spent all afternoon playing with him. He had the sweetest smile and the most heart-melting laugh. It breaks my heart to think of such a sweet little boy growing up in such a desperate environment. As I spent the afternoon there I was again so shocked by the helplessness of these people and the underlying violence in everything they do. Today I talked with a girl living in the plaza that was only seventeen and was seven months pregnant. I can’t imagine the life she has lived and the horrors she has seen. I can’t understand why I was so lucky and why I was born into my family and why I have the luxuries I do. I think about Eric and how little of a chance in life he has and how little opportunity he will be given all while I sit here with the world at my fingertips. I wish I could see the reasoning in this injustice, I wish I could understand why some of us got so lucky while others did not.