Week 8

Translation is more complicated than what it seems. We practice translating a museum text and I constantly looked for words on google. On our second session of the week we made a summary about the book for this month, it was an easy task and a way to save us a lot of reading time. We were able to finish everything on time. My Sunday was a lazy one because I had only one service in all the day. In part it is boring not to have any patients, but on the other hand that is the goal of medicine and any health science. If we don't have patients that means that everyone is taking care for themselves and living safely. So even though I was all 12 hours just waiting inside the ambulance I had plenty of time to do homework. The only service I attended was a crush between a taxi and a motorcycle, there were no injured people.

Week 8 translation reflection

For us, museums are a place visited by many people, and within that population we can find individuals who are interested in art, culture and knowledge; so, it is very sad to encounter situations in which public documents contain many translation and syntax mistakes. This reflects a lack of interest and motivation in learning the proper way to express ideas on another language, and a part from that it gives us the impression of laziness because the person in charge of that task didn't even took the trouble to find someone competent enough to make the translation. 

Week 7

This last Sunday I had a lot of spare time to read while waiting in the ambulance to attend an in-calling service. Our first service was almost at mid day and the call involved a classical accident: a geriatric patient fell from her bed and fractured her left hip and ipsilateral knee. This kind of services are usually quite easy, we only need to transport her to the hospital using a ferule to prevent any other damage to her inferior extremity. During the transport time we usually take her vital signs and data. After this we ate inside the ambulance waiting for any notification on the GPS. Late that afternoon I attended my first "14" which is the code for corpse. Arriving to the residence we met the police who described the look of the patient, as we entered the whole family was gathered in the lobby of the first floor, they didn't quite know what had happened with their relative. As I entered the bedroom I nearly stepped on blood from the corpse. This lady was about 50 years old, she used to be a nurse who got paranoid and depressed after she broke her leg. She committed suicide by trying to cut her body, after what she used the backrest of her bed to hang herself. After determining her dead  being careful not to move any evidence to prevent us from getting into any trouble and getting the corpse's data we left. There's not much we can do in this cases, dead people belong to another department. That night the last patient was a drunk adult who was selling hot dogs at the corner of the street fell and hit his occipital bone with the sidewalk. We treated his injury and transported him to the Metropolitan Hospital of Monterrey. Drunk people usually have hypoglycemia because of the metabolic effects of the alcohol on the body's enzymes, so after being sure he had not neurological damage we decided to canalize him with a crystalloid sollution composed of 5% glucose. He was a difficult patient, he wasn't very cooperative. Basically this summarizes my Sunday.

Week 6

This was an interesting but tiring week. This past week was the last one of the first partial. I took my pharmacology test yesterday and everything went just fine. In our English class I handed in our last project from the monthly grade. My nervousness grew with each day that approached to this Sunday, this dew to my first day at service in an ambulance. I woke up really early, earlier than the sun itself, and with my uniform I prepared for my first and special 12 hour guard of my city. First hour was just for me to get to know all the equipment of the ambulance, counting everything and making sure personally that every gadget worked just fine for any emergency. We got the notification on our GPS of the first service, my heart started beating faster and adrenaline flowed thought my arteries while all what I had learned the past year in the Red Cross about street medicine came to my mind hoping to be able to apply all my knowledge. We were called to attend a Christian church to try to reanimate a 4 year old girl who fainted, but when we arrived their parents had already take her to the hospital by their own. Before arriving to our "Bravo" or base, we received another call of a medical case at a nearby house. My partner and I got prepared and entered the house full of family members of the sick person. He was a geriatric patient who had emphysema, diabetes and started the day with aphasia. His breathing rate was altered, his pupils were not reacting fast enough to reach the standards. He was contious but couldn't move his arms and the right half of his forehead was stretched and the other half's muscles were contracted. We diagnosed stroke. We transported his immediately to the San Vicente Hospital making sure his hemoglobin oxygen saturation was enough. We also canalized him with saline solution, and made sure all his vital signals were just fine. 10 minuted after we arrived to the hospital with him. I was able to auscultated the lungs of a patient with tuberculosis, and attend a drunk Honduran young man who got hit with a bat. This were some of the calls we received today. It was an interesting but tiring day.

Week 5

This first session we watched a movie through the honesty point of view. This was entitled The Wolf of Wall Street, the one where young Charlie Sheen acted. It was a nice and relaxing day although I know nothing about the bank and the topic. It was a little difficult to watch because of the space, next time I rather watch it from one side instead of from the center tables. We were able to watch only about the first half of the movie skipping some parts. Wednesday was another short day because we had a small quiz writing activity about the two articles we read for homework. I personally didn't like that much the one title "Keeping Your Colleagues Honest" I think of it as a bit unnecessary to read; the other article, even though a bit longer, was more interesting and less dramatic. Last class got a bit awkward. We were told to gather in new teams and start writing a presentation comparing two different cultures; almost everyone chose Ireland and South Africa which was unexpected by me. We could've focused on any characteristics about a country, but instead we chose the social characteristics of them and that was kind of boring. This past Valentine's Day I had a partial test of physiology and everything went just fine with the normal regrets, doubts and correct answers. All this tests are completely closed questions. I didn't have an actual Valentine on Saturday but instead I enjoyed a roast with friends until late night. I even remembered my school time were I used to give and receive small letters because I actually got one. 

Week 4

This was a short week because we didn't have class on Monday, instead we had to prepare the interview I talked about in my last post. It was actually easier than what we expected, but because we were in a hurry we just didn't read the rubric and forgot one or two details. Even though, this small amount of time was good for us to let to know us, we hadn't worked together ever. On Wednesday we presented and graded the videos, this was a short class. On Thursday, the last class of the week we did a web quest of Dickens' life, answering some easy questions in partners. This took all class long and was interesting to know about the author we are reading of. The teacher told us to start thinking of our partial project for which we are able to do what ever we want about the story; in part this is good because we are able to use our abilities to reflect some of the ideas of the novel; nevertheless, it is more tedious and difficult to plan what to do about these ideas. This weekend I had my first partial exam, I can't believe how fast is everything going on this semester. We are having three long weeks of partial exams, and somehow we are going to be more time on partials than on normal classes. 

Week 3

For this Monday we were asked to gather in working partners, and write about fifteen thesis statements. Even though our teacher said this gas going to be a long working day I personally didn´t believe so because writing thesis statements is a task we learned at high school. Time passed and after one hour we weren't finished. My partner started down up and I started viscerally with the first themes to write about. Suddenly, we were running out of time; moreover, this task was due on Monday, just he worst day to actually work. We were definitely out of time and inspiration to write all those thesis statements, the first 5 were just too easy, but I ran out of stamina. Everything went well at last. For Wednesday our homework was to write a letter with the purpose of researching another university we wanted information about. This letter should be addressed to someone real in the university's staff team, and properly written. I'm not usually in a writing mood, and I didn't think I was going to be writing everyday, but here we are. Nevertheless, I finished the homework with the three required paragraphs each one with less words than the previous. 

I don't know almost anyone on my class, we are all from different careers. Even though we were assigned teams and I got to know to girls from my class and different careers which I have some friends in common. With this team I'm supposed to do and record a formal job interview. We are three and we made a draft in which I was chosen to play the role of the job interviewer, I really prefer that from doing the edition of the video. We are going to meet this Tuesday night to finish the task that should be handed in for Wednesday.