Medicine & Physiotherapy - MEXICO Daily Life

Daily Life of a Medical Volunteer

7:30am
Wake up in my room at my host family's house. Bathroom facilities are just like back home only the water was cold first thing in the morning - refreshing start to the day! Initially, my host mother woke up especially to make me breakfast - Mexican style chilaquiles (tortilla wrap chopped with a nice sauce) - however she was happy to accommodate any food request so in the future to save her the inconvenience of getting up I said bread and jam would suffice.

8:00am
By this time the kids were up and getting ready for school. I speak Spanish to a good level which made my morning chat with the kids really entertaining.

8:30am
I would generally be out of the door in my hospital uniform which consisted of a white T-shirt, trousers and shoes (white is the uniform colour). I would also have a white lab coat that I would put on when I arrived at the hospital. The bus journey to the hospital 'Clinca 46' took about 20mins and cost about 23pence!

9:00am
Work starts! In the mornings I would sit in the A&E consultation room where all non life-threatening cases were seen. Here with another volunteer, Kathryn, I would get involved with looking at x-rays, examining injuries, relocating dislocations, pain killer injections, and making plaster for casts, not to mention the invaluable knowledge I acquired from speaking to the consultant & the interns. We would also shadow the consultant as he did rounds of the A&E beds.

12:30pm
The morning consultant would go off for lunch and the afternoon consultant would take his place. Kathryn and I would go to lunch across the road in a 'mall' sometimes with other Projects Abroad volunteers based in the same hospital. There is such an American influence in Mexico that for lunch you could have a traditional Mexican meal or a hotdog from the 'seven-eleven'. All sorts of western foods are available to satisfy anyone.

1:30pm
What we did during the afternoon really depended on what day it was. Some days we would stay in the A& E consultation room but on others we would sit in on operations to observe; some of the A&E consultants were orthopaedic surgeons who invited us into their operations and I even had the opportunity to 'scrub up', put on a surgical gown, and assist with the operations. The extent of our involvement really depended on how curious and sociable we were with the doctors.

4:30pm
By this time on most days we had seen enough and went home. However on other days the invitations were too good to turn down; on these days I would find myself leaving the hospital at 8:30pm after having observed urologist and obstetric operations.

5:00pm
On an average day, this was the time when I got home and chatted with the kids of my host parents and also with the two girl volunteers staying in the same house. We would sometimes head off to the internet café together to catch up with e-mails and do a bit of 'webcam' with parents and friends through msn messenger.

6-7pm
Dinner was whenever we wanted and consisted of nice Mexican food; salads, real tacos and all sorts of meats. My host mother was very flexible with her cooking. If I ever wanted anything extra there was a Wal-Mart in the centre of town.

7-8pm
If it was a Thursday we would go to a bar/club which had a salsa night. This was the official gathering for all the Projects Abroad volunteers. It was a great opportunity to mingle with other volunteers and get the local Mexicans or Projects Abroad representatives to teach you a bit of salsa! Gatherings like this also meant that you could organise to meet the other volunteers on other evenings and even sort out for all of you to go away for the weekend. Popular destinations were Puerto Vallarta or Mexico City. At the end of my placement time (2months) I even organised to go travelling round the country with other volunteers I met whose placements finished around the same time.

10-12pm
Time to catch taxies back from wherever we were.