Hardness

I think I am currently immersed in the hardest thing I have ever done.

It may be slightly premature to say that, because I do start clinical rotations in a year, and I may find surgery, neurology, or internal medicine more daunting and demoralizing, but those will be in in English, and right now, I'd take neurosurgery in English over birthing babies in Spanish.

I thought I was at that level in Spanish where I could pretty much undestand everything that was said to and around me. Really, I'm not, it's just that people have been speaking slowly to me and using simple words. When I'm truly on, I'm getting about 75 to 80% of what is said about a patient. As the day goes on and I get more tired, that number decreases rapidly in an inverse exponential curve, or something mathematical like that. Plus it's medical Spanish, and I don't even know what the English equivalent means, plus all of the abbreviations. The most humiliating part of it all is that I can usually follow conversations around me, but the minute that someone says something directly to me, or asks me a question, my brain turns to porridge and I can't understand what they said to me and answering the question is damn near impossible. Any grammar that I learned in Guanajuato has fled from my Spanish repretoire. . it's total surrvival mode now. Sentences like. . I go here, I from USA, Tomorrow I (she) went fishing, no, eating. I've regressed to a 2 year old, and even 2 year olds speak better than I do.

Humbling, that's what this experience is. In so many million ways. For example, I have never been so underprepared (unprepared) for an experience in my life. I barely know what a cervix is, I certainly can't find one, and I'm still not sure if what I am feeling in a mom-to-be's belly is a head or an ass. Meanwhile there are 20 y/o students taking the lead on complicated births. I have lots of reading to do this weekend.

On a cool note, I have learned how to find a baby's heartbeat with a thing that looks like hourglass and basically functions like a cup against a wall - dopplers be damned.

They do 36 hour shifts every few days here. I am not capable of that. I might be able to pull a 36 hour shift in English, maybe once a week (ok, maybe twice). But in Spanish, every few days, I think I might die. My brain has to work 3 times as hard when it's thinking in another language such that, by the time I come home, I just lie on my bed and cry (dramatic, I know) - mainly because I think that's the only thing my brain has any energy left to do. They had me scheduled for a 36 hour shift on Monday and then on Wednesday, and my advisor came in and said, no, no, no, that's just too much for you. . you Americans just aren't trained for that like we are here. As much as I'd like to prove to him that I'm not soft and wimpy and whiny like other Americans, I wasn't about to argue with him.

And although I finally got what I wanted - to be in a city with absolutely no tourists - I am finding myself desperate to speak English again. I know that it's just a product of the loneliness one feels when they are in a new place (any new place) and all alone. I will meet people and I will make friends, that just takes a little bit of time. I'm actually surprised at how unfriendly/unwelcoming many of the medical students have been, but I guess just like medical students all over the world, they are selfish with what little time they have, which in Mexico appears to be even less than in other places. Besides, I have too much studying to do to be all social n' shit.

On the plus side, the doctor I am following is incredibly patient with me and great with his patients. He is passionate about teaching and I think he finds me entertaining. I have felt and measured correctly a few cervixes, measured bellies, felt a fetal head, foot, and butt, and heard the fetal heartbeat several times. On Monday, it's c-section time. . .and then it's on to birthing bouncing babies.

Thanks for attending my pity party.
Here's hoping that this is probably the low point of my time here. The opposite of the honeymoon phase.