Wow, I can’t believe my summer in Costa Rica has come to a close. Time for my last update! On Monday, Pablo and I watched the implantation of a vagus nerve stimulator, which was very interesting. This device is similar to a pacemaker, but it stimulates the vagus nerve with electricity in order to prevent seizures from occurring. One of the surgeons showed us the different components of the device before it was implanted. One piece we haven’t seen before was the tunneler that creates space for the leads, since they do not pass through a blood vessel or an existing space in the body.
We spent the rest of the week building our prototype. On Monday afternoon, we had both halves of our headpiece printed, and on Tuesday we finished the components of all the nodes. We had a small hiccup where our ball-and-socket joints printed without a hole for the screw, but luckily we had some backup pieces from a previous iteration that we could use. Once we had all our pieces, we had to glue everything together very carefully, making sure the pieces lined up in the right way to fit together.
Half of the headpiece, with inserts to allow screwing in the bolts
Once we built the whole piece, we tried it on, only to find out that… the transducer nodes weren’t in the right position. They weren’t far down enough, and we didn’t leave enough space laterally for the transducers themselves to fit. That was disappointing. We were hoping to be able to see how the ball-and-socket joint allowed the transducers to be pointed in the right direction, but we weren’t able to do that with the headpiece on. However, the design still holds a lot of promise, and the position adjustment shouldn’t be too difficult to do. Our design advisor, David, and Dr. Bogantes are planning to continue refining the design on their own time.
Pablo trying on the headpiece
It feels like it was so recently that I was nervously rolling my suitcase through the airport and trying to catch an Uber with Emily on our first rainy afternoon in San Jose! Since that day, I’ve had many more rainy afternoons, and many great memories. Some of my highlights include:
- Our weekend adventure trip to La Fortuna
- Karaoke Mondays and Pizza Thursdays with the gang (we need to continue this in Houston!)
- Learning a lot about neurology from Dr. Bogantes
- Observing many types of surgery
- Meeting other travelers at Selina
- Seeing wildlife in Manuel Antonio
A weekly splurge – pizza Thursday at Lolita
Of course, not everything was travel-blog-perfect. Some lowlights of the trip that I need to mention:
- The weekend I got sick
- Our stuffy dorm room
- Long travel times between San Jose and other destinations in Costa Rica
- Smelling garbage and, shall we say, other waste products while walking downtown
- Seeing sick children and sad family members (that’s part of the deal when you work at a children’s hospital, of course)
Despite these challenges, I really enjoyed my time in Costa Rica and I’m very grateful for the experience. I learned a lot of anatomy and neurology, saw some very cool medical devices, and made great friends. Now I’m ready to settle in to Houston and start the fall semester! ¡Chau!
Brunch with the gang
Saying goodbye to our fantastic mentor, Dr. Bogantes