Still alive and dengue-free

I wrote this about 5 days ago, so it´s a little out of date. I´ll put more new things after it:
Wednesday
Hello everyone!
I had my first overnight shift in the hospital last night. I am dead tired and ready to sleep, but I thought I would update you a little bit first on how it went. Emily, Phoebe, and I chose last night’s guardia to attend because one of our favorite doctors, a resident named Dra. Violeta Muñoz, was on duty. Luckily, with Violeta came my favorite nurses, too, so it promised to be an interesting night. We got to the hospital at about 8 pm and stayed, in the end, until 8 am. At about 11 pm, the three of us got to see the first birth of the night (which was the first birth ever that I have witnessed in person). It came so quickly that there wasn’t enough time for the doctors to get there, much less for the mother (age 27, this was her 5th child) to be taken to the delivery room. The nurses had to catch the baby right then and there! Then the doctor arrived and whisked the baby away when she came in, and it was apart from its mother for another whole hour before the mama got to see her little girl. Shortly thereafter, a bus accident happened outside of Tena and about 8 patients got taken to our hospital. I was there when they started piling into the emergency room. One of the first patients to get there was a little girl who was 8 years old and had her forehead gashed open pretty deep. She required a couple of layers of stitches, but Violeta at least waited for the anesthesia to kick in before she started sewing. And, even better, she did a really neat job of it and I think the scar won’t be that noticeable blended with the girl’s eyebrow. As those patients proceeded to come in, I whipped out my blood pressure-taking skills (thanks for the lesson, Mom!) and helped out a little in the check-in process.
After that calmed down, I stuck around in Emergency, when a pregnant woman came in fully dilated, ready to give birth. Luck was on my side I guess, because I was the only student there and they only let one extra person into the delivery room other than the doctor and nurse. So I put on scrubs, face mask, surgical hat, everything (umm, is that normal? it seemed a little excessively sterile to me) and headed in. This birth was also quick, but the baby had its umbilical cord double-wrapped around its neck and it was slow to breathe. Phoebe and Emily were going to come in for the next birth, which happened pretty much right after, but they didn´t have enough scrubs, so I (luckily? I felt kinda bad.) got to stay in the delivery room and see the next birth, too. This was a 19 year old first-time mother, and its kinda sad that the thought going through my mind was "wow, this is only her first? she waited!". Her birth was slower, and was attended by a resident who hadn´t attended to a birth for 3 years. He was guessing a little bit, and wasn´t really talking to the patient much, so I tried talking her through some things, especially after when he was sewing up her episiotomy. As for that, the episiotomy didn´t seem entirely necessary - that baby was coming out pretty well - Mom, how customary is it for an episiotomy to be cut on a first baby "just in case"? Anyway, by the time all that was over, it was about 5:30 and I wanted a nap. So I took one, until 7, then pretty much wandered around until 8 because nothing was happening, and left. It was an amazing experience. I think I´ll be doing one every week. Okay, time to sleep!

So anyway, that was a week ago. Things have actually changed quite a bit for me in the hospital since then. Us gringas were "found" by a fellow gringa who runs a free physical therapy clinic on the fourth floor. I am really interested in her work and she wanted to do a research project on the link between how births go and the occurence of cerebral palsy and other physical and mental disabilities. She said that she sees forms of CP and haven´t been seen in the US in the last 10 years, and that is really interesting to me. So, I spent Thursday and today with her in her PT office. She is teaching me to work with the kids and we are working together on this project, which right now is becoming a big patient database with information on type of birth (vaginal or cesearian), birth weight, disability, birth complications, etc... with the hopes of running statistics on it later and presenting it to the health minister in Ecuador to change birth policies. I hope it works!! That actually makes staying in Ecuador for the summer even more enticing, because I could keep working with her in my free time, presenting our information.
That is another thing I don´t think I have really mentioned on my blog yet - I think I may be staying in Ecuador until mid-July, depending on if I get a grant from Grinnell or not. There is work that I´ve been offered in Quito to research the health effects of pesticide use in flower plantation workers. But, it is a volunteer research position, so me taking the work hinges on me getting a grant from Grinnell to do it. We´ll see what happens!
A change of subject: This last weekend, clearly, was Easter weekend. All of Gabi´s (my 27 year old host mom´s) family came into town on Thursday and Friday for the baptism of Gabi´s 3 year old son, Francisco. It was really neat having everyone there, though it was a little overwhelming too.
On Friday night, I went out with Emily and Phoebe to go to a bar and we ran into the physical therapist, and then we ran into a candlelight vigil procession. It stopped for each of the stations of the cross and was a pretty amazing sight. I definitely haven´t seen anything like it before. It was tons of people and candles and rosary saying. Wow.
On Saturday the family and I went to Archidona, the city next door, to see its zoo and then we went to a spot on a nearby river that looks like a jungle paradise to swim. Seriously - sandy beach, palm trees, clear water, a little cave, some rapids down below - it was amazing. Then we went to the baptism. The mass seriously went for 2 hours before the baptism happened! There were seven readings, each with a response, before the gospel, then a crazy long homily. Mom, was that how 3 hour long Easter services happened when you were little? Luckily, Gabi and family aren´t that religious so we snuck out after the baptism to go out to eat. The food was great and we had homemade coconut-vanilla cake. Yum!
The next day (yesterday...) all of the family left except Gabi´s sister Maria (24 years old) and Gabi, Maria and I spent most of the day watching movies. For a such a Catholic country, Easter was pretty chill. I´d say that the only major thing the Ecuadorians are missing out on is the trend to eat a lot of chocolate on Easter. Because really, what is Easter without a chocolate bunny?
So that´s my life until now. I am really hungry, so I´m going to go eat some lunch. ¡Adios!