Thursday

St. Georges Caye day was today. This is a national Belizean holiday that celebrates the British defeat of the Spanish, making Belize province of England. The history of Belize is pretty interesting to read. Unbelievably, Belize only gained its independence from England on September 21st, 1981. I’m older than the actual country of Belize! There were many celebrations today in San Ignacio, but unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I couldn’t attend.
I guess my talk with Dr. Lazo yesterday paid off, because today he gave more responsibility, a lot more responsibility. With all the chaos going on with the physicians they needed some extra help. Dr. Lazo and his wife needed to leave to Guatemala for the weekend and Dr. Gamero took off because of family problems so that’s all of the full-time doctors here. Today Dr. Lazo told me his plan and wondered if I could cover the ER for the next 3 ½ days or more while he is gone. At first I thought, whoa, wait a second! I wanted more responsibility, but not managing all the problems coming through the hospital! I do only have about a year of clinical experience so that freaked me out a bit. Then he explained that I will be the first person called to see patients and then I would need to call Dr. Sierra afterwards and explain things and see what he wanted to do. He said I would need to consult with Dr. Sierra on every patient. The whole thing happened very quick as he seemed in a hurry and this is through his sub-par English. He kind of briefly explained how they do there notes here and then he was gone, so I was a bit confused. After the first person came in with the flu I called Dr. Sierra and he was like, “Why are you calling me? Don’t you know what to do?” I explained the situation and he told me I only needed call him if I had a question or something. So, basically I’m here managing the ER for the whole weekend by myself. That’s a crazy turnaround from just sitting and watching to managing all the patients. I spent much of the evening reviewing my advanced cardiac life support cards in case we get a serious case. I sure hope not. So far I’ve had four patients. Two of the patients had influenza, possibly dengue fever. The third patient actually did have dengue fever and the other was a boy that had hurt his elbow on the trampoline. His arm didn’t look broken, but looked slightly dislocated to me on the x-ray (of course they don’t have radiologists to help with x-ray interpretation). I called Dr. Sierra and asked what he wanted to do. He decided to come in so he could coordinate with one of the orthopedic doctors and we splinted him. We’re sending him to see the specialist tomorrow. After these 4 came right in a row it has slowed down and nothing is going on now. While it is a bit of a bummer because I was going to go do something fun this weekend, I’m very glad to have this responsibility as I’m sure it will be a great learning experience for me and of course I’m nervous, but at least I can consult with Dr. Sierra if I’m not sure what to do with a particular case.
Until next time. . .