Nature and National Monuments, woo!

A trip to a volcano, a large hot dog, and a week away in a new place: another solid week down in Costa Rica.

Saturday started early with a bus ride to the Irazu volcano, thankfully all the way up to the park entrance. Turns out, the volcano park is low on the hiking and high on the chilly wind. We had done a bit of prior research so had some layers (photo alert!), but were not expecting that our trip there would just be a walk in a loop to see two craters, the principal of which was dried up. 🙁 Sad day. But, still a good trip with the crew and we experienced our first cold day in Costa Rica, so that is something! We took the bus back down to Cartago and caught another back to San Jose. After that, we visited Haruto and Vanessa’s place, Don Francisco, and walked over to a food stand they had noticed in the area. Papa Dogs was our lunch/dinner that night. (photo alert!) Sunday was a lazy day, movies and popcorn with the girls to reset before the next day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday was back at our OG Hospital Mexico for preventative maintanence on approximately 20 million ECG monitors… maternity, emergency, general med, etc. And the 20 million reports that went along with all of the monitors haha. A couple of the machines did not meet the checks required of them, which we meant there was a bit more digging to do. The two monitors with erroring messages while measuring blood pressure had leaks in the inner compartment, something we determined after exchanging each individual component with ones known to be working. This inner pressure sensor is not something that can be cleaned or serviced, only replaced.

Tuesday morning we left bright and early for Turrialba, a city about 2 hours out from San Jose. (photo alert!) We got started almost immediately working on an anesthesia machine that was out of service. First, we started with the normal checks, but quickly got the error message which let us know that the Gas Mixer Electronic Board did need to be replaced. We started the replacement by removing the top plate and taking a picture to ensure we didn’t mess up any connections when putting it all back together. We removed the old board, and hooked up the new one, reconnecting the various tubes and pin connections. We next plugged in a USB to download the software to the new board (allowing the various gases coming in to be mixed in proper ratio before getting sent to the patient), then cleaned and performed leak checks to ensure everything was in order. It was successful and we were able to clear the error list with the replacement, only having to recheck the filter canister for a leak. After work, I read outside for a bit before sunset and then we had dinner at Locos… for the first night in a chain of nights (something that happens in a town with limited options) lol.

On Wednesday we worked on an ECG strength machine (treadmill) for the morning, then ECG monitors all afternoon. AKA we are very well versed in these machines, and fully understand the ins and outs of cleaning, service checks, and using the corresponding simulators to ensure the monitors work properly with actual patients. On our way out of the emergency department our engineers showed us the posters placed there with information on all the venomous snakes in Costa Rica with shaded map images to describe the areas they are found in: terrifying! Thursday we worked on some more ECG monitors and after work were able to head up to Guayabo National Monument, an area inhabited for over 2400 years that is little more than mounds and old foundations now. (photo alert!) It was a short hike, but nice to get some fresh air (and a little rain of course), as well as a little history lesson from the archeological site. Also, Jhalak and I coerced our coworkers into going to Papa Johns later, yum! Friday was report day per usual, ensuring all the correct papers were signed and stamped on our end, and inputted the same in the logbook kept by the hospital.

While in Turrialba, we also got to drive by the new hospital that has been built and is currently being set up with new equipment. This new one will be a regional hospital rather than a peripheral, and will have 4x more operating rooms, which gives an idea of the upgrade. Our coworkers told us about a couple other large hospitals being built in other areas around the country, and it seems that once a new one opens the old one becomes a step down (clinic/Ebais) or a health area (more administrative). My question is: where are they getting all the personnel for these hospitals if each one is Xx bigger than the last? Jhalak asked about why not just improving upon the current hospitals and clinics, but our coworkers pointed out that there would be nowhere for the patients to go in the situation of a hospital renovation, so it isn’t a viable option for the Caja. An interesting thing about the Turrialba hospital was the influence of the locals. All signs in the hospital were in both Spanish and the Cabécar language, due to the high number of indigenous people in the region who are monolingual. (photo alert!)

 

We will be doing a little celebrating for Raniyah’s birthday this weekend and hopefully finalizing details for our final vacation next weekend.

Adios por ahora amigos! (Goodbye for now friends!)