(Sorry there aren’t any pictures – I’m having some technical difficulties with my camera!)

We’ve finally arrived! After a full day of traveling, it was so exciting to finally get to Barretos and get the first view of our home for the next two months.

Yian and I were met at the airport in Ribeirao Preto by Wagner, who works in administration at the hospital where we are working, and from there it was a 60 minute drive to Barretos. The country here is beautiful! Barretos is surrounded by fields, where there are tons of farms, ranches, and especially cows. We drove straight to the apartment, where we met Thiago, a doctor who works in the Prevention Unit at the hospital and has also been acting as our mentor. Spoiler alert: Wagner and Thiago are awesome! They’ve been helping us so much!

Thursday was our first day at the hospital, and we spent the day walking everywhere. We toured the Hospital de Câncer de Barretos, which is, as you might guess, a cancer hospital. It’s an amazing place, on par with any hospital in Houston’s medical center and it’s awesome to see all the work they can do with the funding they receive from the government of Brazil and their own fundraising efforts. We saw so many things, including:

• in-patient facilities
• the ICU
• the surgical unit
• the out-patient center
• radiology and radiotherapy departments
• the molecular oncology research labs
• IRCAD
• the Prevention Unit

and many more things that I’m sure I’ve forgotten! The best and most astonishing thing about this hospital is that all of their services are provided free to patients.

Also, the Prevention Unit has developed mobile units that are able to take the technology in the Barretos Cancer Hospital to outlying rural areas and screen for things such as skin, prostate, cervical, and breast cancer. We were able to take a look inside of these mobile units, and they are incredible! You wouldn’t believe that you are in the back of a bus just by looking at the rooms.

We were also able to meet with a group of doctors from the Prevention Unit, Dr. Humberto, Dr. Carvelho, Dr. Adhemar, Thiago, and also the director of the Prevention Unit (whose name I was unfortunately unable to catch). We demonstrated the Global Focus Microscope for them, and also discussed making some of the wooden gynecological stirrups. They all seemed very excited about the technologies that we had with us! It was very exciting to listen to them develop ideas and talk about how to best put us and our technologies to use.

Last night, we were invited to a ‘Welcome to Barretos!’ dinner with the same doctors that we met with that afternoon. It was a wonderful meal – because there are so many ranches around Barretos, the area is known for its very good beef, and it was delicious. It was also nice to talk with these doctors, as well as Wagner and another administrator, Silvana, in a casual setting. Everyone here has been so nice and welcoming to us! Luckily, they’ve all also been enthusiastic about practicing their English, as my Portuguese is essentially non-existent.

Our first two days have been so wonderful, I can’t wait for what comes next!

Tchau!

Jessica