My First Surgery

I have officially started working at Manmohan Memorial Hospital! It's great fun because the volunteers are pretty much given free range to go and observe whatever we want. I think the hospital staff are under the impression that we are medical students, although none of us actually are. We've tried to explain a few times that we are still "undergrads" but it hasn't really registered.
My first day I scrubbed in on a gall bladder removal surgery. It was a quick surgery, about an hour, but was pretty late getting started because the anesthesiologist was late. My second day I scrubbed in on a much more complicated surgery. A woman had an ovarian cyst removed the previous day and had developed an infection so had to be operated on again. The incision for this surgery was much larger than the one for the gall bladder removal. It was somewhat strange to watch the doctors rummaging around in her organs, like they were searching for something at the bottom of a huge purse. Anyway, it was a good one to watch. There are a few surgeries everyday that we can watch if we want.
I personally like the ER, and have had a little experience in one at VGH. Yesterday a young guy came in with severe head trauma. He had been working at a Thamel restaurant at about 2 AM and some thiefs came and beat him over the head and stole all the money from the restaurant. I tried to figure out from him and the docs what the weapon was. The ER docs don't speak English so was, but I extrapolated "hammer." But I'm still not fully sure. Anyway, he had gashes all the way down to his skull and was in EXTREME pain. He wasn't crying but you could tell by the look in his eyes. He got some pain killers and was a little better. Thank god he didn't have a skull fracture, so we stitched him up and he will hopefully be feeling better soon.
The hospital is really quite nice and the doctors are very professional. A good amount of them did their fellowships at medical schools in the US. I met with the director Dr. Gupta yesterday, a jolly guy, very boisterous. There are quite a few wards which we can go into any. Not sure about the gynecology department though, I have heard the resident gynecologist is rather mercurial. Most of the "work" in the hospital for us is just observing, which we can learn a great deal. The doctors encourage us to take pictures and carry around a note pad to write down medical conditions and terms to look up later. I have already taken some great pictures of the surgeries I scrubbed in on.