May 11th
Wednesday (May 5): Bahare and I had clinic at the Maternidad at 8:30. We were slightly confused by how to find each other and the dotor, and I forgot his name. Once I was able to find the right floor and right doctor I quickly changed into green scrubs and joined the other residences for rounds. There are about 15 women in the partidos de salidos who were groaning and suddenly one start screaming. A few minutes later she I sbeing pushed out the room and down the hall towards the birthing room. The nurses are telling her not to push so they can make it to the birthing room but she can’t help it. The baby pops out in the middle of the hallway. Then 2 minutes later another woman is wheeled into another birthing room and is given an episiotomy. She was only 19. In Quito and in Ecuador there are so many births that they cannot wait for natural births, especially for the tearing of the vaginal wall. Thus, they just cut every women in the first pregnancy to make it easier to remove the baby and on time. Thus it is a rule, which is a little weird and not very safe. You can get infection very easily here form episiotomies. We then quickly rushed to change into blue scrubs where we then entered the OR to watch our Dr, Dr Marquez, do a C-section. To all of our surprise the woman had fibroids on her uterus, which made it very difficult to stop the bleeding which caused many complications. They had to put a tube in the side of her stomach so they could later drain the blood out of it.
Thursday (May 6): We again returned to La Maternidad where did Rounds and during rounds Dr Marquez had to do a C-section and we were invited to watch. Once dressed in blue we entered the corridor of the OR to find that another Dr. was about to start surgery on a baby. The baby was 5 days old and was not pooping. They found out he had Artesia of the intestine, which is where the intestine did not grow all the way through. So, we watched the baby surgery, which was que chevre.. The Doctor cut open both sides of the un-grown intestine and sewed them together. So, now the baby can poop, yay!!!
Friday (May 7): There was not much going in La Maternidad, we did rounds and one baby was born. We went to Baños as a group though. We rented a van and a driver and he droves us there. It took about 5 hours. Once there we ate at a place called La Calder (The cauldron), which was basically EC- Italian food. It was ok. We then went out to the Leprechaun bar where we danced and talked and drank until midnight or a little later. It was great fun.
Saturday (May 8): We woke up and had b-fast at a Danish lady’s café. It was a little expensive for EC standards, $4 for eggs and toast, but good. She was very bossy. Made you feel like you were being scolded all the time. Once finished we saw a quick movie about crazy adventure tours you can do in Baños. They had white water rafting, climbing waterfalls and bungee jumping. It was kinda rainy and we didn’t want to do something extremely spectacular and crazy so in the end we decided to take a biking tour of the falls. It was an adventure. We biked through the streets of the city out to the highway that takes you to the jungle and through the mountains. It wasn’t too hard to bike, but some of the girls had not biked in a decade or more so they were very cautious and slow. We saw three pretty cool waterfalls but the second was my favorite because I went right underneath it and got soaked. Not so much fun later but it was nice and cool when I was there. Also, the second waterfall is actually on the land of a man who used to own a house and restaurant there. There was a great flood and the waterfall increased immensely and washed away his house. We gave him money because he had nowhere to live, just land to live on. For dinner we went to El café en el Cielo where we had delicious sandwiches and were able to see the entire city. Also, before dinner we went to the baños. They have two hot springs: one is 35 degrees and the other 40.
