My Cape Town Adventures: Friday the 13th

I can't believe it's only been a week since I left for my trip. I've been so busy that I feel like I've already been here for three months!

I started work on Thursday and already know that I'll get more comfortable there each day. For anyone who doesn't know the details, I'm volunteering for the next three months at the Red Cross Children's Hospital on the anesthesiology team in surgery. My first day was a bit daunting because I'm a bit directionally-challenged and have yet to learn my way around; South Africans also have a much more laid back, flexible attitude, so they expect me to be very independent (tough on my first day in a new hospital on a new continent). I'm used to the big and beautiful Brigham, so I have to get used to the more quaint Red Cross. It's a bit difficult at times to understand what people are saying, even if they are speaking English, because their accents are so heavy and they speak so fast. Many patients only speak Africaans, so all the staff know how to speak it, as well.

Once I donned my scrubs, I felt much more at home. Africans call surgery/the OR "theatre," so every day I have to change into "theatre clothes." I've shadowed a bunch of surgeries at home, and I was particularly surprised to find that the Red Cross' surgical protocol is incredibly similar to America's. Most of the equipment, clothing, video monitors and check lists were all familiar to me. I got to see some pretty amazing things in the past two days - several urology surgeries, a circumcision on an 11-month-old, a cardiopulmonary bypass on a three-month-old (the first time I saw a heart beat!), a central line placed in a cancer patient, and several others. The babies look just like dolls on the table! The doctors I'm working with are great, and take a lot of time to explain to me what they're doing. I don't know much about anesthesiology, so I really appreciate the new teachings. I even attempted to intubate an eight-year-old boy today, but kept getting the esophagus instead of the trachea - it's tough! They were in a hurry to get it going so I couldn't get much practice, but I'll do it!

Here are some belated pictures of the past week:

Me with friends Saffron and Emily in London