Teddy Bear Hospital 2014

Once again Teddy Bear Hospital was an awesome success!!! 

Like last year I had one heck of a time trying to get out of class even with my deans office excuse  which we applied for almost three weeks prior to this. Basically, I was missing three hours of a rotation that doesn't even exist in the US and they wanted me to pay 600 zl to make up the class. But the real kicker is that they didn't tell me or anyone else this until the day before we were supposed to go. Needless to say those of us who were going were not having it. In the end we sorted it out with the head of the department so it wouldn't be a problem, but not without some serious anxiety first.

The whole group of us (about 8) all met at a local grocery store and cabbed it to the other side of town. The international school we affiliate with for this is not exactly close so it takes a good amount of time just to get there. Once we were there we got everything all set up and ready to go for the kids. Basically (if you don't remember from last years post about this) there are three stations and kids bring their bear to each station to try them out.

The first station is just basic sort of doctor stuff. The kids tell us what's wrong with their bears and we fill out a little piece of paper with the bears vitals and then we have the kids listen to the bears heart, take its blood pressure, check reflexes, give shots, and stuff like that. The funniest thing in the world is to play pretend with a five year old. "Why don't you listen to the heart? Can you hear it?" "Oh YES I CAN HEAR IT." (I must need my hearing checked).

The next station is "imaging." My friend and I made an x-ray out of a box and collected some old x-rays to show the kids (so that we wouldn't have to tell them that the ribs were an arm again).The kids would put their bear inside, we'd shake the box around, and then we'd pull out an x-ray showing the body part the bear was complaining about. Getting x-rays when most places use computers is a little tricky so we had a few print out versions.

The third and final station was the operating room. We had a big table covered in a sheet for this and some fake scalpels and bandaids. We also brought gloves and masks along for the kids so they could get more into the role. I remembered to bring my sewing kit this year because last year kids brought bears that were legitimately in need of some stitching. I got to sew up one dalmatian- though I don't think the kid really cared.

The kids we had this time around were younger than the ones from last time around ages four to six. And for many of them it was their first year of speaking English so trying to understand them or even get them to talk sometimes proved a bit difficult.

Near the end of our time there some of the kids were really riled up. So instead of releasing them to the teachers as wild hooligans we had everyone get in a big circle and we taught them how to do the "Hokey Pokey" because that's what cool doctors do.

Overall, we really had a blast and I think the kids did as well. If anything though it's taught me pediatrics probably isn't really my thing. I just can't relate with kids well and quite frankly I think they hate me.