Dar La Luz

So my time here has come full circle. Before I came to Ayacucho, I got my placement email. This email told me that I would be working at a health clinic. I had a minor panic attack thinking there must be a mistake. I even emailed the New York office back telling them there must be a mistake in the email, I received some other volunteers placement email by mistake. I know for a fact that I listed that I had no interest at all in working in a health care setting. In fact I am still haunted by my childhood fear of needles and blood. After being told that that was not a mistake, I started trying to think of everything possible I could do to not have to be in the room with the doctors and the nurses. I decided that I would be the entertainment for the patient in the waiting room. I could read to the kids, find a clown nose and make them laugh, anything but watch shots be given. Well much to my relief I got here and found out it was a mistake. Actually all of the healthcare placements where not operating because there is a city wide health care strike ( It has been going on for close to 3 months now, only servicing life or death emergencies.)

Well today I bit the bullet in an attempt to overcome my silly childhood fears, and lets face it shear curiosity. There are now only 2 healthcare interns in the house, Natalie and Laura. The rest left for home last weekend. As luck would have it there were all these options for observing different sections of the local hospital as soon as most of the healthcare interns left. One day Natalie went with Millie, a Australian high school teacher, to observe the ER and watched a appendectomy, removing someone's appendix. The next night there was an option to do an overnight in the Emergency OBGYN ward of the hospital. Laura wanted to go, she wants to be a midwife in the states, but didn't want to go alone. Somehow I got the nerve up to say I would go with her.

At 8pm Marisol came to pick us up and take us to the hospital. We met up with Dr. Salinas, a friend of Marisol and also the supervising doctor for the night. He showed us around the ward, which included jumping in with both feet. The first room we visited was the labor and delivery room. First 5 minutes into the night I saw it all! A lady had just given birth and they were sewing her back up. WOW! That's all I could think then reality set in and how much pain she was in and the massive amounts of blood everywhere. We then were told that there was another lady who was just a centimeter away from her dar la luz aka giving birth.

After the rest of the rest of the tour we dropped our bags and headed back to the labor and delivery room. It was quite and interesting experience. We watched 6 babies be born. One of breached, which was really scary! Laura and I were just starting at the baby on the heating try trying to see if his chest was moving. Finally he gave out a cry, and you could feel everyone in the room sigh with relief. There was one mother who was 15 years old, walked in the the hospital all by herself, no parents or friends to lean on in support. She didn't have a job and wasn't going to school. I felt so bad for her. She had a hard labor, I am judging this by her screams and facial expressions while she was in the room waiting to be ready to deliver. She also didn't really know what she was doing and naturally completely frightened. When she was ready to give birth they kept telling her to push. She would push a little but not enough. She was able to push half the baby out then gave up, the doctors were panicked and a visiting doctor who was there to observe had to go and actually push the girls stomach to help the baby come out. It was a very tense experience!

I also got called into action. Remember how I am scared of all thing medical basically??? Well I had to conquer that fear real quick when all the interns were busy and the doctor was all scrubbed in. The doctor was calling for the interns to help her, but they were all in sterile gloves with other patients. The nurses had been so busy that they were off finding more clean sheets and other supplies that they needed for the next round of craziness. So how was left but me and Laura. I was the closest to the doctor, so she called out "Gringa ven y ayaudame." White girl, come and help me. So there it was, I was asked to get the bottle of water and pour it on the lady, to clean her up. Then I had to go find the green bottle of iodine and pour it on her too. So I can now say that I have assisted in the Ayacucho Hospital.

The night was full of activity, in the past most of the volunteers watched for an hour or so and then were able to sleep the rest of the night. Not us, it was madness all night! We had 4 births in the first couple of hours we were there. Then it slowed down, a bit. We practiced our Spanish and lying skills with the nurses. I was told to tell people that I am a nursing student. Considering that I know NOTHING about medicine, I decided that a better lie would be that I am preparing to take my exams to get into nursing school. We met some really nice nurses and male nurses that were eager to make sure we knew everything that was going on and were we should go to see everything. They also insisted that we get closer to the moms to really see what is going on and learn everything that we could. Needless to say, I politely refused. About an hour later I was so glad that I did, because the doctor was later sprayed by one women's water breaking! YUCKY!!!! It was so crazy all night!

In the end we stayed up all night watching 6 babies be born, 3 more in labor when we left at 5:30 am and being called to action by the doctor. What a night in Peru!