5 de Julio (jueves)– Day 3

I spent the morning with the woman who works in the laboratory. It’s a very crude facility, the lab. It has a small room with a typewriter, sink, two centrifuge machines, an incubator (that is never used), and a blood chemistry analyzer that looks to be circa 1975. Yolanda, the lab tech, is a nice woman. She is very patient with me. She does a funny think when I ask her to speak slower. She starts very slow and simple but then gradually speeds up until she is ripping right through her words. I’ve notice a few things about hearing natives speak. I knew it was going to be difficult to distinguish between words but I didn’t know it would be so difficult to distinguish between vowels and consinents within words. For example, ruida (noise) is pronounced like “reedtha,” one syllable. I pronouce it, “roo-ee-dtha.” It seems like all the words are like that. Also, really easy words that I have been saying since 7th grade are hard to comprehend in the midst of words the others in a sentence. If I do understand them right away, I stop and dwell on that one word and miss the rest. If someone tells me a senetence with “comida” in it, I’m left guessing if they are asking me if I liked the food, what kind of food I like, when I want to eat, or something like that. I think people get really frustrated when they ask me “simple” questions, even 5-6 words long, that happen to have zero familiar words and I’m left with my jaw open. Its frustrating.

Back to the lab. It’s very crude. Each patient enters, hands Yolanda a receipt of payment for the tests and she draws veinous blood from the cubital fossa (that’s the inside of the elbow for the non-anatomists). She starts by tying a ruberband above the elbow and then wipes off the puncture site with a cotton ball of water….from the tap. The needle is a 21 gauge, which I feel is a bit big. She then places a new cotton ball over the site and askes the patient to flex his/her arm for like ten minutes. No bandaid. No gloves. She runs all the tests later. They can test for typhoid, brucella, proteous, pregnancy, glucose, uric acid, blood type, hematocrit, syphilis, and a few others. Urine can also be collected, either by a proper urine “cup” or any common household container such as the 2 gerber baby food containers we received. A testing strip containing about ten colored sqares is dipped into the urine samples and then the color change in each square is compared with standards. This qualitative test is used to assess specific gravity (I have know idea how that works), pH, WBCs, billirubin, nitrates, proteins, ketones, hemoglobin, and a few others. Urine samples are then centrifuged and the supernatant is discarded. (wow, that sounded too much like a organic chemistry notebook). The sediment is viewed under light microscropy and the cells are counted by observation. The endothelial cells, bacteria, and WBCs are counted without any stain and completely qualitatively. Two blood smears were performed, stained with hemosolyn only for somreason, then the cells were counted. Other tests were perfomed but either I don’t remember them or they are not that important. It was pretty interesting to see how much you could do with only a few primitive machines and reagents. Also, for some reason, if two people want to get married, the woman needs to have blood drawn and tested for syphilis and blood type. Neither Yolanda nor I could give a rational explanation for this odd combination.

I’ve upped my dose of daily pepto after tio luis has been giving me strange fruits that he has “washed.” I don’t like waiting for the ‘rrhea to hit but it will hit hard I’m guessing. Probably next week, or later if I’m lucky.

I went to the libaray tonight. On Tuesdays and Thursdays there is a scheduled time for Mexicans and Americans to congregate and practice Spanish and English. It was difficult even for me but good. I sent an email to the instituto habla hispana asking about the possibility to get a private tutor. I hope to hear from them tomorrow. Tio luis is gonna look into another private lesson tomorrow too. I guess it’s cheaper $8-10/ hour, while the instituto habla hispana charges $12/ hr. Not much of a difference but whatever. Forcing myself to actively listen to everytihing is very tiring so I’m going to dormir now.