Monday, Monday

This morning I received the first of my daily four-hour dosages of intensive Spanish con mi profezora que se llama Diana. Knowing that we've all had Spanish before, we spent most of the classtime hammering the subtle differences between the verbs ser, estar, hacer, tener, and haber, all of which express different kinds of is-ing, are-ing, having, doing, and being. Despite the hunger induced by the exhausting task of trying to understand everything (the class was conducted entirely in Spanish), our teacher accidentally held us over for 20 minutes, leaving a very short time for us to get lunch. Not that I was paranoid from being late (2-minutes) back from lunch the first day, but I wasn't about to be late again. Consequently, I had a rather small but delicious lunch: a three-cheese bagel sandwich.

Following lunch, today's instrumentation lecture focused on electrosurgery units (ESUs), a technology that replaces the knife-slicing of patients with zapping them. We're talking about up to 400 Watts of super high-voltage AC current with frequencies up to 3,000,000 Hertz. When the current passes from the metal "pen" (often called a bovie pen) into the patient, it disperses through the body and is then collected, so to speak, by a large electrode on the other side. Since the current is most concentrated at the tip of the pen and the body's resistance to electricity generates heat, the bovie pen cuts through tissue by burning it, creating the smell of burning flesh. Yum. Actually, however, electrosurgery cauterizes tissue and coagulates blood as it cuts, dramatically improving the efficiency of the operation and the recovery time of the patient. A danger of electrosurgery, though, is that electric current can again become concentrated at a place in the body other than the tip of the pen where a surgeon intends to cut, such as the collecting electrode or an alternate path to ground. When this happens, the patient will suffer burning.

During lecture, I got to go up in front of the class and use a bovie pen to cut through a bar of soap (for no particular reason, I inscribed an "M" into it), but in the field, we'll be testing bovie pens by cutting through slabs of raw meat. Then, if not vegetarians, we could conscientiously enjoy the smell of the burning flesh.

Speaking of food, tonight's dinner at the homestay was incredibly good: baked/breaded fish fillets, macaroni & cheese with tuna, seasoned rice & beans, a bowl of soup, and a glass of very, very fresh pineapple juice.

Time to study!