UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

  In the state of Oaxaca, México, they commemorate death. They believe their death family members come and visit them. Thus, they prepare an altar with food, beverages, entertainment and more. The picture above is the altar we built for those we have died during a migration process. We used the monarch butterflies to elucidate the nature of migration. People enjoyed our altar and it even came out a Mexican TV show!

   On this day, I was on the surgery floor of the hospital. Due to the amount of people that come to this hospital from all over the state of Oaxaca, there are many people on the waitlist to get surgery. Only a few get selected to receive surgery each day. One this day, I experienced an amputation of a diabetic foot. The amputation involved removing most of the leg due to a severe infection. The doctors feared that the infection would spread if they did not remove most of this legs. According to the surgeons there, this is a very common procedure. They also shared that a second amputation is very common within a year of the first amputation. Currently, they are working on addressing this problem by encouraging medical providers to check the feet of patients with diabetes and educating patients on how to take care of their feet.

This day was my first time on Hospital Civil, a teaching hospital that provides primary, secondary, and tertiary care at low cost. This hospital is oversaturated and lots of natural births and c-sessions happen each hour. During a four-hour shift, there was approximately 12 births with just 1 expulse room and a surgery room available. The first birth I experienced was a very difficult birth. The mom was 24 years old and she could not dilate. After many hours of anguish and encouraging her, she was told she had to get a c-session. She requested that I enter the surgery room with her so I did. About 30 minutes later she had a beautiful baby boy. The next day, I went to go visit them to the hospital and brought them some milk and bread. The mother named her baby Inaki.