I had heard from the other volunteers that the Pulmonogly (lung-related) rotation was really enjoyable, but didn't exactly understand what about it, until I arrived at the hospital and met Dra. Tejerina. I have truly enjoyed my time with each and every one of the doctors in my rotations, but none compare to this sweet and charismatic person. One of her first patients' mothers told me, "she's not just a good doctor, she's a good person." I could not argue with how true this was. On the first day Aaron and I were with Dra. Tejerina, we were in her outpatient consult room. She had me take notes on paper forms, Aaron transfer them to the computer system, and both of us help with the physical exams of each patient. The latter was by far our favorite part. Many of the kids had lung-related illness including asthma and recovering pneumonias, but there was a lot of general pediatric stuff, too. One lady came in with her daughter, carrying a grocery bag of red-brown liquid. She held out the bag open for us to see and said that her child's pee looks weird! The doctor was as surprised as us and kindly asked the lady to dump the urine in the toilet. She also asked her if her daughter has been eating a lot of Jell-O, to which the mom said no, but that her 7-year-old drinks coffee every day. The doctor was not pleased and explained the consequences of this.

Tuesdays and Thursdays Dra. Tejerina is in the Infectology inpatient unit, so we spent our time with those patients the following day. The vast majority of the cases were kids who had such bad and developed tooth infections from improper dental hygiene, that the infection had progressed to their faces, nerves, and bone, leaving many with large external abscesses (even needing surgeries). One child's tooth infection had made it to his eye! There was also a very young baby with whooping cough.

Wednesdays always begin with a lecture of rare cases at the hospital, each time presented by a different department. The case studies that we saw during our time at Hospital del Nino were:

- Hodgkin's Lymphoma (1 year old boy)

- What at first appeared to be a huge tumor, but turned out to be a hairball in the abdomen - psychological problems where the child ate her own hair over the course of years (7 year old girl)

- Enormous tumor in left knee (8 year old boy)

- Complicated swine flu (3 month old boy)

- Malnourished and neglected baby with HIV (8 month old boy)

The presentations often are very interesting at first (these are extremely strange cases!) but often turn into a heated argument between the doctors about hospital policy and treatment options that become a little too dragged-out for us.

Since Dra. Tejerina also happens to be the Down Syndrome specialist at the hospital, Wednesday is her Downs outpatient visitation day, and has been one of my favorite days at the hospital so far. Her patients on this day ranged from newborn to 5 years old and were some of the cutest kids I have ever met. Downs children are extremely sweet and happy. The harder part was seeing the way that their parents are struggling with the demands of a kid with this illness. The first patient was a young couple that had to receive the diagnosis of their new baby - not easy news to get. But Tejerina did such a wonderful job of this, and the rest of the patients were ones with which she had life-long relationships and clearly loves very much. The kids' favorite part of coming in was blowing bubbles with her bubble-soap which was a job I didn't hesitate to take.

On Friday (as in most departments) hardly any patients showed up, and we had our first sad goodbye of many, with Dra. Tejerina.

This was the last day for 9 of our volunteers, now our Bolivia family. We all went out to dinner and stayed up until morning with our friends, tearfully sending them off on their way home one by one. It's incredible how close we have gotten in such a short period of time. Certainly our shared interests and goals have something to do with it, but there was also something special about this group.

The few of us who remained rested at home on Saturday, but on Sunday decided to explore the outskirts of La Paz a little bit, not having been in town for a weekend yet. We headed towards a peak known as The Devil's Molar for it's strange shape. Unfortunately we ended up on the wrong side of the rock formation to climb, and had to take a taxi back and around. However, the taxi did not drop us off at the small village where hikers often begin the trek, but drove us all the way up the road to the very base of the peak. We felt a little bit like cheaters, riding past struggling hikers, but also enjoyed not walking up the steep up-hill in the high altitude and hot sun. We climbed up as high as we could and took in the spectacular view of the entire city. From up there it didn't seem so big.