With 3 days left until departure, I am looking at everything like it is the first time I had seen it. When walking the same streets to school daily, I had taken for granted a lot of the beauty Segovia has to offer. I had become acclimated to seeing The Roman Aqueduct, The Cathedral and The Castle Alcázar everyday that it became like just passing another building. Taking my final tour of the city everything looked clearer and it was if a slideshow of the last 3 months was playing in my head. Every place in Segovia was a memory I had formed with my new family.
The bonds formed with my classmates were intimate because they are your lifelines in a foreign country. You don’t have your family or your usually friends and you are in a new place where you do not speak the language. You go through phases of emotions. When I arrived I was overwhelmed with all the new cultural aspects thrown at me. It later changed to frustration due to the language barrier. One of the most difficult things is wanting to say something and not being able to communicate what is in your head. The worst was when people speak to you in this half sign language/interpretive dance, talking ridiculously slow and shouting because they think, as an American, you don’t understand Spanish. At times I got so angry that my brain said, “No thanks, I’m done” and checked out from the conversation. As the language skills improved overtime, I developed a confidence and eagerness to learn more. Wanting to have a conversation with everyone just to learn a new phrase. The moment I felt comfortable, the semester was over and time to go home. Going through this at the same time as the students other students created an inseparable friendship.
As I was enjoying my last beer with my friends in the fuencisla (a big field below Alcázar), I felt a huge drop of rain hit my shoe. When I looked up in the sky all my American friends were laughing and all of my Spanish friends were oohing and ahhing and clapping their hands. The raindrop that hit my shoe was a giant bird turd that was sure to stain my new boots. My first reaction was to try to smear it off in the grass. I attempted to clean my shoes and nearly got tackle by all my jealous Spaniards. It is the best luck you can have is to get pooped on by a bird. At this moment every cultural change that I had gone through had finally set.
Everything about this trip has changed the path that I was on. I have learned that it is all right to slow down and enjoy more than working toward that perfect G.P.A. When you are immersed in a culture for your whole life, it becomes easy to think that other culture do things the same as yours. Being thrown into a culture shock created a lot of uncomfortable moments leaving me feeling vulnerable. These moments make you feel like you are alone when you are in a room filled with people. Adapting to this forced me to change my mentality and approach on life. Being in a state of uncomfort forced me to learn new things about myself. I learned how to live in the moment and stop planning all the meticulous details of my future. Instead of thinking about 5 years in the future I am able to enjoy day-to-day and worry about the present. I took a change of pace to teach me to be truly happy.
I’m about to board the plan and the only thing on my mind is how everything is going to look when I return to the U.S. I keep thinking how weird it will be to hear everyone speaking English. Also, I am praying that I don’t get seated next to the person that wants tell me their life story, or the bigger person whose extra loving spills over onto your side of the seat. My room here is empty and my bags are packed, I know I will be returning to Spain in the near future.
After 4 weeks of shadowing, I finally got the chance to fly solo. Patient history was needed from room 5 and I was instructed to “go do it.” I was so eager to put everything I had learned into practice. I felt like it was a little out of nowhere for the doctors to let me do something on my own, as if they were up to something. As I left the nurses station all the doctors were looking at me with smirks slapped on their faces.
I walked into the room where there was an older lady sitting on the gurney with her feet dangling off to the side. It appeared as if she had gotten dressed in the dark. She sported bright green pants, a button up checker blouse, (the buttons fastened in the wrong hole) and a burlap brown jacket decorated with cat broaches. Her hair was teased so high, I was expecting one of her 20 cats to pounce out at any moment. She was Tammy Faye’s make-up doppelganger, with a lazy eye. I started confidently with, “So why are you here today?” Before I could finish my sentence she blurted out, “Why are you smiling at me! Do you think its funny that I'm here again? Stop that you little brat!” When she spoke, it sounded like a drunken parrot, squawking out orders. It was obvious that she had a mental illness.
It was not her illness that caused me to chuckle, but her form of self-expression. You have to imagine her looking at you, with her head slightly cocked so her good eye can see you, mixed with her tourettes-like form of speech. As she slurred out a list of fake problems, I fought back laughter. I struggled to not to smile, but occasionally a little sneer would escape here and there. After 10 minutes with the cat lady I knew that I had fallen into a trap, I had been hazed!
I finally made it out of the room and back to the nurse’s station. All the doctors were holding back their laughter; I was the entertainment of the day. They later told me this lady comes in once a week with the same problems and they just couldn’t resist setting me up. In any group the new guy is always put through some sort of hazing. With 2 weeks left in my internship, I finally feel like part of the group.
Besides learning hospital vocabulary in Spanish, my time spent in the emergency department has opened my eyes to a lot of things. Every patient and opportunity with the doctors has given me more insight into the medical field. Shadowing the doctors from room to room, being taught first hand how to read an EKG, how to properly set a wrist fracture, or having to tell someone their cancer has returned, has set the mold for the doctor I want to be. After dealing with difficult situations in the hospital, viewing patients as a numbers, and not human beings became my coping mechanism. It is a lot easier to tell give someone bad news if you can think of them as just a number. I was able to take a step back and understand the importance of patient care. This experience has helped me to reflect on what I need to improve to develop into a better doctor.
On of the biggest differences between hospitals in Spain and in the U.S. is where the money is spent. The cultural principles in Spain of enjoying life and knowing how to prioritize are carried into the hospitals. When you enter most hospitals in Spain, you see a waiting room of patients and doctors who are rested and working to the best of their ability. When you enter the majority of hospitals in the U.S. you see a beautiful water fountain with a solid granite back drop, a grand piano for no one to play, the newest more expensive furniture in the waiting room that will need to be replaced in 2 weeks, and of course a Starbucks. You almost have to do a double take to make sure you are walking into a hospital and not a day spa.
The point is, hospitals are places for people to receive treatment. Think about the last time you had to go to the emergency room. Do you remember the chairs in the waiting room and the tread count of the sheets on the stretcher, or do you remember the treatment you received? The money in Spain’s heath care system is put towards healthcare. This seems to be an idea that the U.S. cannot fully understand. The next time I walk into a hospital in the U.S., and see the all the unnecessary spending, it will be hard not to picture how my lives that money could have saved, or how many people it could have cured.
Once upon a time there lived a beautiful jovencita in a small pueblo of Spain. Her job was to walk to a fountain very far from her pueblo and collect water for her village. She spent all day collecting water for her people. Every day she grew more and more tired of her efforts. One day when walking to the fountain the poor jovencita could not take another step and collapsed. In that moment the devil appeared and offered her a deal, “I will build you an aqueduct so you will never have to walk this long journey again, but for the price of your soul.” The jovencita agreed to this deal with one condition, the aqueduct could not lack a single stone. Within no time a great aqueduct appeared. As the devil went to collect her soul, the jovencita noticed something strange on the side of one of the arches. There was a stone missing. The beautiful jovencita was able to keep her soul and never had to walk to the fountain again. Over 1,000 years later the aqueduct stands with only one stone missing.