La Clinica de Adolescente

Listening to the heartbeat of an infant!

This week I have been spending the mornings in la clinica de adolescente, which is a clinic for girls ages 12 - 19 who have had babies.  I am shadowing Dra. Dora Carrera, who has been working at the clinic for 12 years.  The clinic is a 20 minute bus ride from "la Y," which is the stop closest to our home stay.  I leave the house around 7:15 and get to the clinic at 8 am.  I was super nervous on Monday to go  because I am the only student going to this particular clinic this week so I have to travel alone.  Over the weekend, we went to Otavallo, which we heard was the biggest market in South America.  We took three different buses to get there and somewhere along the way someone stole $50 right out of my pocket.  The buses are super crowded and everybody pushes everybody, so I didn't even feel it.  But I've gotten more street smart and this week I haven't carried more then $2 with me.

Me and Dr. Carrera in her office!

When I first get to the clinic, I go to Dra. Carrera's office and put my white lab coat on.  She meets with girls who bring in their babies for checkups.  The babies are usually a couple of months old and Dra. Carerra lets me listen to their hearts with the stethescope.  Sometimes the girls come in with the baby's father or their moms, but other times they come alone.  As one girl was walking in, I thought that she had just come with a friend.  It turned out that the woman was actually her mother, but she looked young to me.  When Dra. Carrera asked questions, it was always the mom who answered, which was unusual because whoever comes with the girl typically stays quiet while she answers questions.  I noticed that the girl seemed pleasantly disconnected and wondered if she was deaf and/ or mute.  The check up was fine but after they left, Dra. Carrera told me that the girl was mentally retarded and she had been raped. It made me so sad.

Listening to the heart of a newborn!  Today, one baby's heart
was beating very fast and it had a murmur, which I could
actually hear!

After the morning patients, we go to a different section of the clinic to check the babies that have just been delivered.  They have three rooms that each hold about 8 girls and their newborns.  The beds are lined up along each wall and we go to each of them, one at a time.  The youngest baby that I have seen so far was only 14 hours old!  What incredibly interesting creatures young babies are.  There are completely helpless beings; it is amazing that we all started in this exact same way.  Dra. Carrera checks their heads, and she sometimes lets me touch them too.  It is really cool to feel where the bones in the cranium haven’t fused together yet!  She also presses on their skin to see if they have jaundice.  She listens to their hearts, checks their privies and moves their legs in circles and then presses their knees to either side in order to make sure that they to not have hip dysplasia.  Sometimes, she also has to draw their blood.

Today I stayed later and sat with the girls as another doctor
explained to them how to clean around the umbilical cord,
wash their babies, breast feed and store breast milk.

Me and Andres, who is almost finished medical school!

I really wish that I knew more Spanish so I could talk to the girls.  Some of them seem happy and express love towards their newborns, others look exhausted and a few might be depressed.  I want to hear their stories and offer some words of encouragement but I am afraid to talk too much.  (The other night at dinner, I was trying to say “she is afraid” and I ended up saying a curse word).  Dra. Carrera has an intern named Andres who speaks a little bit of English, so he talks to me n English and I try to respond in Spanish but I understand him a lot better than he understands me.  I think that in the States, we are a lot more tolerant of accents and mispronunciations than are people who speak Spanish.  Spanish is much more specific about enunciation.  For example, the word carne, with emphasis on the a, means meat.  But the word carné, with emphasis on the e, means card.  So things can get confusing real fast.

I am still taking Spanish classes in the afternoons, but tomorrow is my last one.  Today was also the first day of the semester at school, so now I will have to start reading my textbooks in the afternoons!