CBC Student Summer Traveler: Grace Parekh

This summer, I flew to Spain and shadowed doctors in the Hospital Clinico Universitario Lozano Blesa. This was an incredible opportunity and widened my eyes to the wonders of medicine and the world.

When I started living in the city of Zaragoza, I realized that this city was beautiful, and I started to appreciate nature. I loved walking by shops, cafes, parks, and bookstores. I noticed the little sunflowers growing in a park as I walked by to explore my new home for the next 5 weeks.

This city used public transportation and we all were given a bus pass to get to the hospital. Every weekday, we used the bus and entered the hospital, and every week, we changed the specialty that we were shadowing.

The first week, I was in Internal Medicine. I saw their consultations and how the medical students talked to the patients and assessed their abdominal pain. Later that week, I saw how the doctors performed colonoscopies and endoscopies. I truly felt like I understood more about the digestive system and how the information taught in classes is used for treatments.

The next week I was in Neurosurgery. I got to see three brain surgeries and a spinal surgery. I enjoyed seeing how the surgeons cut through the layers of the head and to the brain as well as seeing the spine being modified to help relieve the patient of chronic pain.

The next week was ENT, which was ears, nose, and throat. I saw how assertive yet kind the doctor was in this department. She dealt with many kids with hearing issues, so she was gentle with the patients but assertive with the patient’s loved ones regarding what steps needed to be taken. The doctor was always busy and spoke very little English so I got to practice my Spanish.

Next week, I was in the Neurophysiology department, and I got to see brain waves on the EEG (electroencephalogram) and perform EMG (electromyography) tests on me and my partner from Global Medcats. It was extremely interesting to see how physics is used in the EMG in measuring the velocity in the different muscle areas. The last week was Pediatrics and there I got to see two live births and a caesarian section birth. Then I also saw how the medical students assessed the newborns to check if there were any problems present.

In all these weeks, my love for medicine grew and I saw how interactive the doctors and medical students were in the hospital on a day-to-day basis. Aside from my shadowing experience, I found a new-found love of walking and exploring coffee shops and bookstores by myself.

There were always moments where I found myself one with the places I went: the beach in Valencia, the El Retiro Park in Madrid, the cobblestone streets of Tarragona, the coffee shops in Zaragoza, the mosaics in Barcelona, the waterfalls of Alquezar, and the nightlife in Spain as a whole.