Big Hospital. Big Day.

Today was my first day at Hospital Edgardo Rebagliati in breathtaking (cough, cough) downtown Lima (I think that they have me staying 15 miles away in Miraflores because it is safer and nicer). Rebagliati is big (1500 beds) and crowded. Thankfully, the muchos extremely nice Director of Anatomic Pathology, Dr. Alejandro Yábar, picked me up at the hotel, drove me to the hospital (in dense traffic), introduced me and showed me around (Yo no hablo Español y Dr. Yábar hable poco Ingles........). I learned, among other things that:
- They have a six bed bone marrow transplant unit for both adult and pediatric transplants (always full!).
- All blood product units in the hospital blood bank are donated by family and friends of hospital patients. There is no national blood banking system and no system for voluntary donations other than by friends/family.
- Anatomic and Clinical pathology and clinical Hematology and Oncology are all very separate and it is the lone, lonely hematopathologists (Dr. Quinones and Dr. Morales) who are trying (with limited success) to bridge the gaps.
- 3 flow cytometers (one with 8-color capability). One doesn't ever work. One sometimes doesn't work.
- I get my own office but the microscope doesn't have a 50X oil objective and the second ocular means that there isn't enough light to actually look at anything over 20X anyways.
- They fix the bone marrow cores in formalin and I absolutely, positively need Mary or Jan or Mavis to e-mail me the info about AZF with the U of M fixation protocol or I ain't gonna survive the month.
- Dr. Quinones (who I will work with directly but that I somehow didn't get a photo of today) is absolutely lovely and the best part of the day (besides meeting Dr. Yabar, Dr. Morales and Dr. Navarro) was having lunch at a beautiful Peruvian restaurant on the beach.