When I first told mi esposo, David, that I was packing myself and Caleb off to Peru to work in a hospital that was doing bone marrow transplants he told me that it must be a hospital for drug lords because cocaine had to be Peru's number one industry. If it is, I haven't seen it yet. Rebagliati definitely seems just like Hennepin County Medical Center only much bigger and the big industries here in Peru seem to be tourism, mining and minerals, fishing, agriculture, fuels, manufacturing (hey! doesn't that Quimica Suiza logo look suspiciously like the logo for Target??), banking, health care and insurance (a little bit like old Minnesota). A lot like Minnesota is the morning traffic on the 35W equivalent. When Dr. Yábar picks me up at 7:15 AM it takes 30 minutes in traffic to get to the hospital. When he picks me up at 7:10 AM it takes 15 minutes in no traffic and we can actually find a space in the doctor's parking lot. So, I am learning about trafficking but mainly automobile trafficking.
I was ready to be picked up at 7:10 AM this morning because I was up at 5:00 AM with a raging sore throat (I just knew that I was gonna get some kind of sickness no matter how careful I was.....). I got up and dressed and popped down to the local Lund's equivalent (well, actually, if you check out the photo's this place beats the caca out of Lund's). Their Pharmacia was all set to sell me some codeine laced throat lozenges but I told them that I'd settle for some Benzocaine and Hall's Mentholyptus. No problemo. It got me thinking about what the drug laws are here so after soldiering through a day of lecturing and looking at slides (and slugging down green tea, Tylenol and sucking on good old Hall's) I toodled down to one of the many Miraflores neighborhood pharmacies. They stopped me from taking photo's just as I was about to snap a shot of the locked case of Maybelline cosmetics. They did let me quiz them and they made it sound like EVERYTHING stronger than Tylenol requires a prescription. I zipped back down to my friendly 24-hour Vivanda Market to check back in with their pharmacist. She told me that it must have been a (one of my many) "lost in translation" moment and that the morning pharmacist would not have sold me the throat lozenges with codeine without a prescription. No problemo, I bought the benzocaine ones and took photo's until I was stopped from doing so by a charming armed security guard.
Gotta go and rest up! Tomorrow is the Big Grand Rounds (no, I didn't get to do it Monday and I'm really bumming out because I wore the "Grand Rounds Outfit" that Ann Dayton picked out for me on Monday and now I don't know what I am going to wear!!!). Shout out to Lisa P. and James McCormick --YES I did go and work out at the gym despite the fever and sore throat...
Well make sure not to push too hard, and let yourself rest too! You are doing a lot and in a new place so there is all that taxing happening on your immune system.
ReplyDeleteOn another note...it seems as though you have begun a bit of spicing up your blog with some Spanish (HA caca), I bet by the end of your trip I won't even be able to read your blog unless I have a translator present!
Keep up the great work! You are a courageous woman.
L-