PCR Crash Course
This week Sarah and I went to the Molecular Biology Lab at Clínica Bíblica. We were kindly received by Gabriel the lab technician, who showed us around, explained to us what all the machinery at the lab did and even gave us a crash course on PCR testing! We got to see how machines helped lab work become less tedious, faster and cheaper; and we also got to observe repetitive manual processes in need of tools and machinery to hasten processes. A lot of the manual processes are performed when specific tests are done for small batches and it doesn’t make sense to use automation machines that work in large batches of dozens of samples.
In the later half of the week, for our internship we shadowed Dr. Bogantes, a neurologist at Hospital Nacional de Niños (HNN), who let us observe patient consults and patient interactions with the equipment available at HNN. We talked a lot about EEG, EMG and Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound (TCD) and how a lot of the equipment is designed with adults in mind and how adjustability was a big issue with healthcare in children since kids vary a lot more than adults in shapes and sizes. To get a better idea of what we were tackling Dr. Bogantes even performed a unilateral TCD on me 😂.
Unilateral TCD
Finally, on Saturday, Emily, Hannah, Sarah, Travis and I went to La Paz Waterfall Gardens with a GMI Graduate that Hannah met at Confluent. We had a great time and I got to take out my camera which I haven’t used in a while! I remember going to the waterfall gardens when I was a kid, so it was like going on a nostalgia trip for me. We got to see butterflies, birds, snakes, jungle cats and of course the famous waterfalls. Nature is a huge part of the Costa Rican appeal, so I hope everyone that’s visiting from GMI is having a blast going on these nature-centric trips.
La Paz Waterfall, at La Paz Waterfall Gardens