i love the smell of irony in the morning!

when i first got to the hospital, i wanted to spend more time in or near the surgeries rather than in sterilization or whatever else. so i found jobs that didn't require as much specialization to do. one such job was as the circulante, who helps prepare the surgery, fills out surgery papers, and is the non-sterilized person who can go get more sutures or gloves and open them in a sterile way so they won't be contaminated for gloved people to handle.

one of the easiest parts of that job (which i therefore have done a lot of) is placing stickers on a piece of paper as you see in the photo. what's going on here is, nearly everything the hospital uses that's not renewable (gloves, gauze, the little plastic cup in which the sample goes to the lab, etc etc etc.) comes with a little sticker which you remove from the packaging onto a sheet like this, which is then used to charge the patient--basically all costs are effeciently and accurately passed to the patient in this way.

one day as i was playing stickers in the OR much like i did when i was 5 i reflected on what exactly i was doing. i, the citizen of the wealthy nation had come to ecuador, a country with 70% of its population below the poverty line, to help the people. ...or to help take money from the people! haha. it's kind of funny. if you look at it right. or wrong.