Happy 4th of July! This is the first year that I haven’t been in the U.S. to celebrate the 4th of July. However, Simon Bolivar Spanish School made up for this by holding a 4th of July celebration for all of the volunteers. Earlier in the day, I observed the repair of a left ankle fracture where the patient fractures both the tibia and fibula bones. The orthopedic surgeons placed a titanium plate on the tibia bone and a single screw in the fibula bone to stabilize the ankle. The following surgery was to repair a left clavicle fracture.
On Friday, I switched it up and decided to shadow vascular surgeons instead of orthopedic surgeons. The first surgery of the day was an exploratory angiography to determine where the surgeons would be placing a stent in a patient’s leg to improve blood flow later in the week. The second surgery was placement of an AV fistula for kidney dialysis. The vascular surgeons did so by connecting a vein with an artery in the patient’s right arm. Later in the afternoon, my host family and I said goodbye to our host mom, as she was leaving for an international business trip for 2 months. My friend and I took a taxi later that night to a bus terminal in North Quito. We are headed to Ecuador’s coast this weekend to visit Canoa and are taking an overnight bus that leaves at 11:45pm. Ciao!
