Another week of rain and sunshine in Costa Rica flew by. This week, we are starting to get into more of a routine. We now know exactly which office to go to every morning, what each consultation room does in the pediatric neurology wing, and even which grocery stores are the cheapest, depending on the type of food, around the area.
The Niños team continues to shadow Dr. Bogantes at Hospital de Niños in outpatient neurology this week. My small handheld notebook is rapidly being filled with clinical learnings, observations, and potential needs to the point that I am about to start my new notebook in a few days! This week, in addition to seeing our usual pediatric neurology patients, we attended a monthly interdisciplinary meeting consisted of medical personnel from pediatrics, pediatric neurology, and pediatric genetics, to discuss complex cases that require cross-functional discussion. We also took a small trip to San Juan de Dios hospital for an adult stroke patient and a pediatric TB patient consultations. It was eyeopening to see the difference in hospital organization, as well as the various architecture of the different hospitals, as one of the buildings was a temple!
What is also different this week is that we started going through our current notes and narrowing down our needs by following the Stanford BioDesign Student Guide in preparation for our upcoming midterm presentation. I am excited to share that I will be exploring potential solutions to improve transcranial Doppler transducer placements for cerebral artery velocity measurements in pediatric sickle cell patients.
On Tuesday night, Alex, Rei, Connor, and I, as well as two of our local tico friends who we met in the first week of bootcamps, went to a Costa Rican World Cup qualifier match against Trinidad and Tobago. We were able to see Costa Rica score three goals, even though only two counted, and win the match. There were many different sponsorship stalls right as we entered the stadium full of games and free merch. The atmosphere, the chants, and the churros will be something that I will not be forgetting in the near future.
Over the weekends, we did the infamous La Chimba hike and coffee tour (the muddiest hike I have ever been on) and visited both the Jade and Gold museums to learn more about the history of the country. Rei and I were also able to satisfy our Chinese food craving by introducing Alex and Connor to some Chinese dishes the Costa Rica Chinatown has to offer. This was a very productive week!
