It’s strange—being here, away from home, seems to make the highs higher and the lows lower. The past days have been filled with frustration. At the risk of sounding like a whiner, these are some of the things that have added to my stress level recently: my camera broke. The rental car broke. We didn't make it to Cape Point over the weekend. I spent half of my day on Monday in a cubicle gluing together foam rubber sandwiches which will one day be made into neck splints. I got ripped off and ended up spending around $50 on a 20 minute cab ride. I hate feeling that I am always engaged in an uphill battle.
But, on the flip side, being in a foreign country makes me look at the world with new eyes. Even the most everyday, mundane details are fascinating. Have you ever heard anyone speak Xhosa? It’s beautiful. People make there great half-chirp-half-clicks with their tongues on top of the syllables of the words. Also, last week, Sarah and I were eating lunch in the café, and we looked out the window and there was one of the kitchen-staff people, standing outside of the building making deep fried dough to sell in the café.
And like I’ve mentioned before, I am learning quite a bit about healthcare and therapy as well. This morning Sarah and I observed burn surgery. It was quite the experience. I can’t say that it made me want to be a surgeon, but was fascinating to be on the other side of the knife. The operation we saw was pretty grotesque, but then again I hear that most burn surgeries are pretty gruesome. For most of the procedure, the doctors used a long razor blade to debride (aka shave off the dead skin) the third degree burn wounds that the woman had over the front and back of both of her legs. After witnessing the surgery, I have a new appreciation for the pain the people on the burn unit have to live with everyday.
The end of this week marks the half-way point of my rotation in the hospital. I’ve only got two more days to sew pressure garments—Monday will bring new adventures in rheumatology. But until then, I’ll try to find a camera to post a few pictures of some of the great spandex burn suits I’ve made.
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2 comments:
I hope that when you say ugly you are not referring to the Spandex burn suits...those sound pretty HOT to me.
: )
It's true, I do sew one HOT spandex burn suit. To clarify, the ugly was supposed to refer to the very gory surgery. :)
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