Week 1 summary - Daily Life

I am absolutely enthralled with the experience I am having working in medicine here in La Paz.
That being said, La Paz is, to me, almost too modern. It's great for living and working in, but I'm not getting the crazy cultural contrast I got in Cuzco. But it's because of this that I thinking I'm also getting a much better exposure to medical practices.
And I think that's complimented by my being without other volunteers here. I love it because I get completely private attention from the doctors and directors and everyone, but it can definitely get a boring without another volunteer in the house.
This host family situation is alright. I find myself a bit jealous of people's stories of great host families who teach them how to cook and are very accommodating. My one meal a day, restrictions on going out, and lack of Internet leave a bit to be desired...

But it's by no means ruining my experience here in La Paz, just not the host family experience I envisioned. I joined a La Paz couchsurfing group and have met friends through there as they travel through the city.

I found an awesome bar near my house called Diesel Nacional that's decorated to look more like an old mechanics shop.

Also, there's my favorite thing in the city. The market food. Market food is always my favorite and is usually the first thing I try when I visit a new city.

Week 2 - Hospital de los Niños, Oncology and Surgery

In the past week, I have learned so much about medicine, compassion, culture, and myself.
I spent the past week in both the Oncology ward and in Surgery.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I spent only in Oncology. There was so much to learn about the different types of cancer and associated treatments. I did some research myself over the weekend before to try to familiarize myself beforehand. There were about nine children in total over the few days I spent there.
Most of them had Leukemia, so I learned a lot about the course and treatment of that cancer. One had a tumor in the upper portion of his right cheek, although the scans revealed that it penetrated far back into his head. There was one boy with Leukemia in grave condition due to the presence of another infection, Sepsis.

All of the children had one parent by their bedside.
There was one moment that was hard, and that was when the mom of the boy with the facial tumor saw the scans and just how large the tumor was. She cried pretty hard for a while and it was difficult to stand and observe.

Worlds Most Dangerous Road / La Senda Verde / Coroico

This past weekend I visited the World's Most Dangerous Road! It's a mountain biking trail and one of the most popular attractions near la Paz. I went with a company called Adrenalin Barro Biking. I only paid 500Bs which is cheaper than some of the really popular tourist companies. However I heard about some of my friends visiting some sort of monkey reserve at the bottom, so I told the lady at the tour agency I wanted to see them. And she told me the only way was to either spend the night in the nearby town of Coroico and return in the morning, or stay in a treehouse at the animal reserve. Obviously a ridiculous question. Treehouse it was.

So I left early Saturday morning for the biking trip. SO FUN!!! It was my first time mountain biking and I was surprised at how easy it was to navigate the road. The first section is paved and it was freezing cold and foggy and I was wet and frozen and flying down a road and loving it all. Then you reach the unpaved deadly road part and we had gorgeous sunshine in one of the most gorgeous valleys I've seen. The road is full of breathtaking views and lots of fun times. We end at some luxury hotel a few thousand meters down in the valley and eat lunch and take a shower.
The bus then dropped me off at La Senda Verde animal reserve.

Best experience of my life.

Weekend Update

Today I met up with two couch surfers and the three of us took a mini bus out to Valle de la Luna, an absolutely incredible work of nature out in the Zona Sur!

Definitely worth checking out!

I also tried Aji de Lengua (or spicy cow tongue), a delicious traditional dish in Bolivia.

Week 3 - Centro de Salud - Adolescent Pregnancy

I spent my third week here in La Paz working with Dra. Santivañez in the Centro de Salud in Alto Miraflores, a poor neighborhood in the outskirts of La Paz.
Centros de Salud are first level clinics, which means they have consultations, can give shots, but can't do surgery or have inpatients. The same as an American doctors office.
Dra. Santivañez is a specialist in adescrnt medicine at one of these clinics in a poor neighborhood of La Paz. She is well recognized in her field! She was one of three contributing authors to the book of diagnostics for the Bolivian public health insurance manual for mothers and children (SUMI). She is often asked to contribute to studies, attend conferences, and give opinions. More than that though she is a very amiable and funny person to work with.

Week 4 - Hospital de los Andes - Infant medicine

I spent my fourth and final week in La Paz working with Dra. Cecilia Uribe at her consultation in the Hospital de los Andes in El Alto.
First let me fill you in correctly:
I was supposed to work with a Dra. Gutierrez at the Hospital de los Andes during my final week here, but on Sunday, my medical director, Dra. Uribe texted me telling me that Dra. Gutierrez wouldn't be in so I should go back to Hospital de los Niños.
So I did. I went back and found Dra. Cruz, an incredibly nice maxillofacial surgeon I had been with when I was in the surgical room in my second week. I asked her if there was anything to see in surgery, and she said no, but I was welcome to come with her on her rounds!

This was an incredible experience because as she is a specialist and surgeon, we got to go to all of the departments to offer inter consultation on the difficult cases. We started in oncology and looked at some solid tumors and talked about surgery options. Then we went to Gastroenterology and saw a boy born without eyes, a cleft palate, all of his organs reversed (eg, heart on right side), scoliosis, severe malnourishment, and anemia. It was a heartbreaking case.

Vacation Week - Potosi and Sucre

This past week, I was in between my two programs. I finished my program in La Paz and had ten days to get to the southern-most city of Tarija. I decided to spend the time visiting the cities Potosi and Sucre.
Potosi is the ancient mining town. The Spanish first discovered massive amounts of silver in the mountains in Potosi, and the mines are still active today!

I left La Paz on a Friday night to arrive in Potosi on Saturday morning. When I arrived I checked into my hostel, Koala Den, and made friends with some other people in the dorm right away. They told me they were going on a tour of the mines that morning. I decided to join. So within an hour I was in protective clothes, boots, helmet and headlamp, and off to the mines!

They were awesome! We actually crawled through levels of the mine, rode around in an actual mine cart, and hung out with some miners who were working there, drinking some 96% miners whiskey and all.

Week 1 - Centro de Salud Nestor Paz

My first week in Tarija!

First thing, I absolutely love this city. It's warm and so friendly. It's much smaller than la Paz, so it's very common to run into people you know.

I spent my first week working in the clinic of Dra. Amanda Delgadillo. She works in a neighborhood here in the outskirts of Tarija. It has a relatively poor patient population and offers basic services such as consultation, vaccinations, dentistry, and a minor inpatient room if people need to stay to let stitches heal.

Dra. Delgadillo is a super nice doctor and the whole clinic in general has such a welcoming, family vibe. All of the nurses were hilarious and always joking about the "pretty new student." We all had coffee and snacks after the work day together and I really felt like I was a part of the clinic.

The one downside to this week was that Dra. Delgadillo already had a student in the final stages of her internship about to enter residency. Because of this, I felt like I was really an unnecessary third wheel in her clinic. She is a general medical doctor, so we had cases ranging from pregnant women, to a man with tuberculosis, and a lot of sore throats. The coolest parts of the week were the occasional moments I spent working with the doctor in the laboratory looking at fluid samples and diagnosing different parasites!

On Friday, I accompanied two of the interns on their community work. It was a lot of fun! It was National Children's Day, so we walked around farmland to different houses asking if they had young children and distributing nutritional supplements to help kids get their vitamins.

Overall, the week was rather low-key, but a super friendly environment to be working in!

Week 2 - Hospital Obrero - Internal Medicine

For a very interesting ward in the second largest hospital in the district of Tarija, this was by far my most boring week.

I realized here what an immense difference in my experience the personality of the doctor I'm working with makes.

I spent my time here working with Dr. Victor Vilcaez.

Monday was Tarija's anniversary, so no one worked. So my first day was on Tuesday, and I arrived at the hospital at 7am. In Internal Medicine I asked if Dr. Vilcaez was there and they said not yet. After about twenty minutes I asked again and they said Oh yeah, he's in that room. I introduced myself but he told me to wait and then came out and said we were going to do rounds.

As per usual, rounds consist of the residents taking the doctors around to all of the patients and explaining their case and any recent developments. They're always the hardest for me to understand because the Spanish is so fast and mumbled.

Sunday 4/13

Yesterday one of my friends from Tarija and I went out to the famous Wine Route! We got in a bus early in the morning that took us out through the beautiful Valley of Conception where there are vineyards and wineries. We got to visit over five different spots ranging from a large industrial winery to a small family owned shop where they make artisanal wines. Tarija is famous for its wine, and while I personally don't like many of them because of how sweet they are, they do have some pretty good ones!





Today me and another gringo rented bikes from this awesome agency. It only cost us just over $10 for the whole day with gear included. We took the bikes out to the neighboring pueblos of San Lorenzo, Coimata, and La Victoria.

San Lorenzo was a super quaint little pueblo with very friendly people! The day was beautiful for bikes: not too hot and not too cold.

Coimata is an awesome little spot back in the mountains with a gorgeous waterfall and natural pools to swim in.

Over all a really great day!!!

Sunday 4/21

Today some friends and I brought a bunch of wine a cheese out to this beautiful spot called Tomatas Grande and spent all day swimming in the river, drinking wine, and enjoying each others company!

Thursday 4/25

Started today getting picked up by the doctora at 5:30am and we went out to the farm of one of our patients. She is a super friendly old woman who invited me out there to try the Bolivian drink Ambrosía. It consists of fresh cows milk, the grape liquor Singani, and cinnamon.


The farm was beautiful in the sunrise and she and her husband were such nice company!!