Stitches and stuff.

I have been completely enjoying Cafayate. In all ways: food, atmosphere, weather, company, etc.  I am recovering from Dave's departure as well. Monday we had a fabulous lunch and I got some wicked tan lines (winter sure is rough here).  We had a tasty dinner too.  Then he left on a bus at 5:00am for Salta, and his subsequent return to the US. He is currently in Miami, in the middle of a 15hr layover.  Ugh.

Yesterday morning I went with Dr. Vargas to the hospital in San Carlos, a small town of a few thousand people, 22km north of here. It functions as a kind of walk-in clinic with a few beds for inpatient and one labor and delivery room. It is tiny. There was a single patient staying in the hospital.  She was there for significant stomach pain, and a classical Murphy's sign. (This indicates that she has an inflamed gallbladder and means that when you press on her stomach near her ribs on the right, she pauses during inhalation because it hurts when he diaphragm pushes her gallbladder to close to your hands.)  Otherwise, we saw about 10 patients there several post-op and a few others.

Today at the hospital in Cafayate, I did my first stitches.  I stitched closed the cuts for a laporoscopic surgery. (aka a total of about 8 stitches.) Of course I felt pretty good about this.  Also, the surgeon taught me how to gracefully make knots which I practiced for about 20min after using thread tied around the arm of a chair.  Everyone got a good laugh out me sitting there tying knot after knot, myself included, and now I am also much more graceful at knot tying.

Later on I assisted in a hemorrhoid surgery. (After doing the spinal block.) The assistance the surgeon needed was more simple that for some surgeries so the second surgeon did another small procedure while I helped the first.  It is interesting to get the perspective of the surgeon now, in addition to the anesthesiologist.

I also went to the consultario (clinic) after the surgeries and saw how several of the appointments go. The practice with my Spanish is constant and applying it really helps.  I even read a little of a textbook on OR nursing (in Spanish) and could pretty much understand it. 

When the appointments were over, I returned home and Skyped with some fam for a while which was lovely.  Then I dropped off my laundry, just finished a ham and cheese sandwich at Fabiola's and am going to go exercise.
 I made the mistake of starting "Game of Thrones" yesterday after the hospital since Dave had left and I was alone. I read about 1/4 of the book before bed.  Hopefully I can finish all of them before school starts again.  I have a feeling it wont be a problem.