Hello hello everyone!
Today marks the beginning of my 4th week at Hospital Nacional de Niños; this week Dr. Bogantes is seeing admitted patients and we’ll be following him around different wards in the hospital, so I’m looking forward to having a change of pace. Today we visited 6 different patients in the endocrine ward, the hemodialysis ward, and the ER. It’s interesting that Dr. Bogantes is accompanied by a flock of other people when he visits the inpatients (other than me, Alex, and Apple). This is something I noticed when I shadowed him during the Needs Finding Workshop. He told us that this is in part because Niños is an academic hospital, which means that there are medical students and other students there; in fact, today some of the medical students were in charge of describing the patients’ medical conditions to Dr. Bogantes and the pediatrician. I noticed that it’s harder to understand the conversation between the patients/parents and the medical staff, mostly because we’re in small hallways and we don’t want to disturb the other inpatients. Furthermore, they’re moving quickly from patient to patient so it’s not appropriate to stop and ask them what’s going on; but thankfully, Dr. Bogantes sat down with us afterwards to let us ask questions about what we’ve seen.
Over the weekend we went to see an animal sanctuary located a few minutes away from our hotel! It’s called Refugio Animal de Costa Rica and it was incredible to see. They take in abandoned pets and wild rescues so there’s a wide variety of animals to see. I was really excited to see native species to Costa Rica, particularly the venomous snakes! As an ophiophile, it was amazing to see a Central American rattlesnake (that I didn’t know even existed) and the incredible fer-de-lance in person. We also saw two beautiful two-toed sloths being fed a meal of leaves, and I was really surprised by how small they were—about the size of a very large cat. I don’t know why I imagined them being the size of humans, so I’ll blame the Nature Channel for that.
The deadly fer-de-lance going into shed
Two two-toed sloths enjoying their morning.
After visiting this sanctuary, I really want to visit the other one in San José called Rescate Wildlife Rescue Center, which I believe is much bigger than Refugio Animal. I’m hoping to see many more reptiles and maybe even a few wild cat rescues. (Can you tell what my favorite animals are?)
On Sunday, we went to the Costa Rican Art Museum in San José. It was much larger than I thought it’d be since they had multiple exhibits up. It was really nice to quietly walk around the museum and examine the artwork. Afterwards I definitely felt my own passion for art to flare up again, and when I got back home, I even did a few drawings in my sketchbook.
Sketch by Juan Manuel Sánchez Barrantes
I’m really enjoying my time here because I can really experience multiple aspects of Costa Rican culture: seeing the healthcare system in action, visiting different cities and making friends, indulging in the flora and fauna. I’m looking forward to the weeks to come.
Best,
Rei Guo