Hi everyone! I’m alive and well in Nairobi. I’m currently working on my 4th week at Medevice, and I am still having a super enjoyable, informative, and meaningful time! This past week, I was able to join Casey and the ISEED and Rice 360 students, as well as the Kenyan BootCamp students on some of their needs finding days in the Kenyan hospitals. I joined them for visits around Thika and Kiambu hospital where I had the spectacular opportunity to witness a C-section birth. It was so wild watching an infant take his first breath of his life! And what a crazy procedure that was to see! It was a lot faster than I was imagining; the time from the first incistion to the point at which the surgeon was showing the mother her newborn was only about 10 minutes, and the rest of the hour was spent suturing and ensuring everything was stable. The clinicians were using the suction device during the procedure, which was directly helpful for field research towards my project with Medevice. Generally, the suction machines are wheeled into the room, plugged in, turned on, and are left running for the duration of the surgery. This is normally okay, if they are using the right machine. A lot of the times, unfortunately, clinicians are using suction machines that don’t generate enough vacuum for their intended use, specifically in orthopedic surgery. I haven’t quite yet gotten to the bottom of this issue. Is it a budget reason? Is it a lack of knowledge on the intended application of these machines? I still have some investigating to do to discover the root of this problem.
One problem I am struggling with is the acquisition of one of these suction machines. I have been working with my boss, trying to contact as many different people as we can to obtain an obsolete suction machine so that I can get a look at the insides of it and see where the device failed for them. This would help significantly in building a bigger problem portfolio to make sure I am covering all bases while tackling this issue of clogging. It would be nice to see if the problem of ‘We just need more suction’ stems from their pumps failing due to leakage, or overuse, or if it is just genuinely a case of using the wrong equipment for their procedures and their pumps can’t handle the thickness and chunkiness of the effluent. Unfortunately, our efforts have been to no avail. It may come down to buying a new pump to be able to test my solution for an orthopedic-specific suction tip, which would be just about halfway helpful. Understanding the internals of a failed pump feels like a crucial step that I don’t want to miss out on.
In other news, it was my birthday last Sunday! It was an awesome experience being in Kenya for that; my first time in a foreign country on my birthday! A lot of the other Rice students were sadly (but excitedly!) on safari and couldn’t join for the festivities. Emma, Jasmine and I still had a great time. Emma and I went for a hike in Karura forest in the morning, then I went for a massage in the afternoon, and then the three of us stuffed our bellies at the all you can eat Brazilian steakhouse. And it was so much cheaper than an American Brazilian steakhouse, it was awesome! Definitely one for the books. There have been a lot of protests going on around the city. There was a blogger who was imprisoned and passed away while in custody for what I believe to be whistleblowing. We’ve been keeping a close eye on that. I’m starting to miss home a bit, but I am still looking forward to all of the things I have to explore here. We have a yoga class as a company at the end of the day on Friday, which I am super excited for. Okay, that’s my update for the week, see you next Monday!
