Do No Harm

This is Nicole again! The head estomatologist, Dr. Bruno, is a brilliant and interesting doctor. He chucks his metal instruments in the used instruments bin from across the room, opens drawers with more force than needed when there are glass vials of anesthetic inside, and hums while he works like he is tired of doing the same thing day in and day out. Despite these observances, I love learning all the things he surprisingly cares so much about. On one of the first times we were working on someone's teeth, he said very absolutely, "the primary rule of oral surgery is 'do no harm'". I already knew this general rule, but he was so serious about it. Then flash forward to Tuesday, he got furious at this one patient and the Portuguese I could pull out of the conversation included phrases like "They are not doctors, they are dentists. Dentists don't know anything." Afterwards, he told me in English that he keeps seeing the same problems in his patients because they go to get dental care from a local dentist but the dentist wants to keep the patient coming back so they leave some thing that will keep them coming back and all for the money. I can't believe a dentist would do that given all the lawsuits that could come about, and I wonder if it is common or if there are just one or two bad seeds on the island, leaving Dr. Bruno to do the real care. I admire him even more for being so outraged, as he should be. I can't believe how fast time is slipping, I still have so much to learn!

On Monday, I went to surgery and saw:

-part of a thyroid gland removal

-a four hour long cholesectomy

There were two sections of the small intestine removed along with some probably cancerous polyps along the way. This was the patient's second surgery, and I was told he had some colon issues but had an accident that made it worse. Before the surgery, they took a picture of a strange pink opening on his right side in which some it looked like stomach contents were pouring into a plastic bag. I didn't get a chance to ask what they do with these pictures or what happened to him, but his colon was in really bad shape and I'm glad he had surgery to fix it before it got even worse.

-2^nd degree burns getting scraped off the left side and almost all of a patient's left arm

It was the most blood I’ve seen yet in the hospital. Almost the entire arm from wrist to shoulder was bleeding profusely as the doctor kept scraping dead green skin away with the suctioning hydro machine. Usually, the bleeding stops after just one blot with gauze. This time though the entire arm was just bleeding all over and blood was pouring onto the sterile sheets. It was hard to believe that the surgeon was “doing no harm” by taking off this layer of skin. A nurse slathered on an extremely thick white layer of a cream that is supposed to encourage new skin and prevent infection. She has been very nice to me. While putting it on, she said that it used to be only made in America and then Portugal started making their own. I can’t tell if she admired American ingenuity or not, but I’m still glad this cream existed for this lady. This was the first surgery in which I stayed for the patient to come back to consciousness. I was impressed with the five nurses and doctors who worked together to lift this significantly overweight woman onto another bed without hurting anything, while trying to understand what she was saying and making her as comfortable as possible.