Additional First Experience in the ER

It was an eventful and eye opening experience last night in the emergency department at Vicente Corral Moscoso Hospital. We figured we would be able to see a few ambulances between 4pm and midnight, but we saw a whole lot more. Around 8pm the masses started arriving, and the emergency started to fill up beyond capacity.  With about 12 beds in that part of the emergency room, and many more wanting to be seen, medical students, interns and attending physicians were constantly busy patients treating, suturing, and organizing the room to meet the demand outside that seemed to never stop. Specifically, I woke up this morning thinking about a woman I will call Sofia—an 86 year-old woman that suffered an unfortunate fall that resulted in a massive lesion to the top of her head. The first time I saw her was around 8pm, while laying in bed #10, wrenching in pain. Sandro was on shift, and let me help by grabbing materials for him. Essentially the interaction went like this:

Sandro, “Could you get me a #10 needle?”

Me, “Sure, come se dice needle?”

Sandro, “Aguja.”

Following that, I would search the unfamiliar emergency room using my very broken Spanish in search for the said item (#10 aguja, bisturí, guantes, and on and on). This type of interaction happened multiple times, and by the end of the night I felt okay with our new surroundings. Thank goodness for the nurses and other staff that were kind and willing to help out a Spanish-deficient gringo. In the end, Sofia’s head was sutured up and the last I saw of her was at midnight when we left, lying in bed #10 with her children at her side. 

Before our first night in the ER, Sandro showed us around centro de la ciudad. Left: In front of the governor's mansion, Elissa buying sweet empanadas from a street while Mark was playing tourist. Right: the gang in front of the new cathedral of Cuenca.