Cirugía

Today Cassandra and I decided to go to observe the cirugías (surgeries) at the hospital.  First we had grand rounds in the auditorium, then they served everyone sweet coffee and tamales for breakfast.  Yum.  We chatted with Dr. Medina, the sub-director of the hospital who is kind of crazy and known for his antics among students and staff at the hospital.  He introduced us to Dr. Aragon (Carlos), who would be doing the pedriatric surgeries for the day.

Cassandra and I with coffee and tamalitos

With Dr. Aragon

First up was a postectomía, which is the medical term for circumcision.  It was on a 2 year old little boy that was getting chronic infections in his penis because the foreskin was very tight.  Compared to what I've seen and described to you in the rest of the hospital, the surgeries are very clean and efficient.  I didn't see any monitoring equipment there either, but there is a respirator and the anesthesiologist is constantly observing the patient and taking blood pressure readings.  I realized that I never really had a clear picture in my head of what a circumcision procedure actually looks like until now, how the foreskin is cut, how much is cut off, and what they suture.  It was a good thing they did it on this kid because when they pulled the foreskin back there was quite a bit of pus in there.

With other med students

Next up was supposed to be a surgery on a boy to drop his retained testicle, but an emergency came in before they got started on it.  The emergency was an older man, he appeared to be about 70 years old, who had gotten into some kind of accident with or in a pick up truck, resulting in his left forearm getting filleted open from pinky to elbow.  Pretty gruesome.  Luckily he had no broken bones, torn tendons, or damaged nerves or vessels in the arm, but the hand was a little more cut up.  That surgery took a while so in the meantime we chatted with Carlos, the surgeon we were following, who was just waiting for the other surgeon to finish with the arm so he could do the testicular retention surgery.  We asked about his life and found out that he plays volleyball and basketball 5 days a week or more, he lives alone, has never married, and has 3 kids with 3 different mothers.  At this last divulgence he turned away in embarrassment, so we quickly changed the subject back to sports.  I was able to take a lot of pictures with the doctors and students and we all exchanged emails to share them.  Cassandra and I had already received an email from Carlos by that same afternoon!

Since the arm surgery was taking a while, Cassandra and I decided to observe a C-section instead before we had to leave.  They have a operating room reserved exclusively for C-sections because they have so many.  The mother was over 9 months along and the baby still hadn't even dropped down closer to the pelvis, so they decided to operate.  The surgeon made a vertical cut in the abdomen and then a horizontal cut in the uterus.  They had pull pretty hard at the opening and pushed on the upper abdomen to get the baby's head out.  Once the baby boy was out we followed him into the next room where they did all the post-birth stuff, cleaned him, weighed him, gave vitamin K injection, etc. while the mother was being sutured up.  It was so beautiful, I'm thinking maybe I'll go into obstetrics!!