I Lava You To The Moon And Back

WEEKEND ADVENTURE

Our last week’s weekend adventure, as previously mentioned, was the Irazu volcano! This was a half-day trip rather than a weekend one, but nevertheless, we made the best of it. Early Saturday morning, the GMI group took the 8am bus to Irazu National Park, and luckily they took us all the way up to the park entrance so there wasn’t much of a hike. The volcano is the tallest in Costa Rica at about 3,432 meters (11,260 ft). I am glad I packed a few extra layers because the climate up there is not really the same as down below. We all were shivering, but at least we saved some sunscreen. Two out of the four craters were visible to us: Crater Diego de la Haya and Crater Principal. Crater Diego is known to change colors from green to red and Crater Principal is known for its bright blue water. Unfortunately, both dried out so we were looking at empty craters but the elevation was astonishing to look at! The surrounding flat terrain looked almost ominous with the black sand, fog, and a pond of water on Playa Hermosa. It almost felt like we landed on the moon. Besides the craters and Playa Hermosa, we had the option to hike to the highest point but we did not have enough time because we had to catch the 12:30p bus back to San Jose. The park had a little bakery and I tried their sweet cinnamon roll and hot chocolate to fight the cold. We did not spend much time at the volcano but with the amazing pictures we got there, it was well worth it! Afterward, we spent time eating dinner and POP’s ice cream in Escazu and finally got to check out Haruto and Vanessa’s place at Don Francisco.

WORK TIME

This week we spent most of our time in Turrialba, Cartago at the William Allen Hospital. On Monday though, we were performing preventive maintenance on blood pressure vital monitors at Hospital Mexico: our dear old friend that we haven’t visited since the first week of our internship. We can perform preventive maintenance on these machines in our sleep, so there isn’t anything exciting to report for that day. On Tuesday, we set out for our trip to Turrialba bright and early at 8:30 am. It was only a 2-hour ride, so we got to the hospital at around 10:30 am. We hiked daily to get to the hospital because the William Allen Hospital was on a hill (WHAT!), no hospital should be on top of a hill. We saw a woman who could not get up after falling trying to walk up the hill to get to the hospital. Besides that, the environment, set-up, and construction of the hospital was similar to all the other public hospitals: people waiting in long lines, limited privacy, crowded, mostly open construction, and equipo medico’s outside-back-of-the-hospital-in-a-random-corner location. We spent the day performing corrective maintenance on an anesthesia machine (we have seen plenty of those before!). The vaporizer which mixes anesthesic vapors to fresh gas flow was broken and needed to be replaced. The replacement was not the hard part because it consisted of unscrewing the headboard, disconnecting some wires and replacing the whole circuit board with the vaporizer. Before we replaced it though, it was important to check that the vaporizer definitely does not work because it is a really expensive part. After replacing it and performing the regular cleaning procedure of the important parts of the machines, the leak-test was performed. However, it failed and so after testing it a couple of times and debugging the issue, we found that the CO2 canister was the issue. The little rocks (typically about 1.5 – 5mm in size) inside the canister were taken out, and the bottom was cleaned which fixed the issue! The minerals inside the CO2 canister are chemicals containing sodium carbonate and calcium hydroxide that react with the carbon dioxide to absorb carbon dioxide and produce water and heat. Usually if the minerals change color (ex. white to pink), then it means the PH decreased (acidic) and the minerals need to be replaced. It is also important to keep the canister free of dust to prevent any leakages. The rest of the week we mainly worked on performing preventive maintenance on EKG machines and now we are absolute pros at them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun Fact: Turriabla is an indegeneous territory of Cabécar people, and so all the hospital signs had Cabécar language translations for them!

WORK-CATION ADVENTURES

Besides our hospital visits, we had some time after work to visit Guayabo National Park. It is a national archaeological site of the pre-hispanic indegeneous group. We saw circular and rectangular mounds used as bases to build houses, transit roads made of stone, and aqueducts. It was not a very long hike (we finished it about 45 minutes) and of course it rained on us but I love seeing the different national parks, and I can never get tired of hiking! Katherine (field engineer) also bought us a souvenir necklace with a stone face mask that the indigenous people used to wear. Pictures below!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Thursday night, we switched hotels because our original hotel did not have room for us that night. The new hotel on Friday night had an amazing view because it was on top of a mountain. We could see all of Turriabla from our balcony including the new hospital that they are building. We drove around the new hospital which Seguro Social is funding, of course. The new hospital is much much bigger than the old William Allen Hospital and has a capacity for 110 beds. It is set to open in about 6 months, and more field engineers from Meditek will go there to help set up devices the first week of August. We will unfortunately not be here to help install devices, but hey maybe we can come back in December for its grand opening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Besides that, it’s a little special someone’s birthday tomorrow (Raniyah!), so we will be celebrating 🙂

Until next week,

Jhalak M.