Surgery is cool and I have a great teacher.

Friday morning started like the day before focusing on the anesthesia.  Except Rene was more determined to speak to me in Spanish only even though he loves speaking in English.  After a couple hours, he had some free time in his schedule (which is rare) so he went to run errands.  I elected to stay at the clinic and follow his partner around, Juan Lopez who is affectionately referred to as JLo :) Since the morning was "quiet" I ended up staying in the surgeries and watching.

It is pretty unbelievable what can be done to the body and it made me appreciate how the human body is much less fragile than I tend to think. We are designed to repair ourselves very well.  And when we need surgical help to do it, we can heal from that too.  

The coolest thing about watching the surgeries was how it made anatomy come to life.  I loved anatomy this year and to see it in action was awesome! 
I saw a tubal ligation (illegal unless there is a medical reason for the woman's saftey), a meniscus repair (in the knee joint), both done laporoscopically.  I also saw a knee repair where the gracilis tendon was irritated, swollen and weak and the man's knee had become dramatically knock-kneed, this was fixed.  There was also a "cyst" in a mans wrist that needed to be removed and yesterday (Saturday) I saw a laporoscopic gallbladder removal.

All in all I would say that Surgery is amazing. 


On another note, I would also like to say that Rene is a phenomenal teacher.  Perhaps because he has been in my shoes when he learned English, but I think there is more to it than that.  He is wonderful at explaining to me in Spanish what is going on.  He speaks slowly and uses limited vocabulary which I know or can figure out. When someone else says something that I do not understand, he re-says it, in Spanish, in a way that I can, often just by slowing down.  I can understand a lot of the medicine too, which he clearly wants to teach me.  He checks often to see if I am comfortable with what I am doing and repeatedly tells me to let him know if I need anything at all. I am very grateful for having him as a cornerstone of my experience here.