On this last day of June, we are approaching our halfway point of our time in Costa Rica! This past week at Hospital de Niños, we shadowed Dr. Bogantes in inpatient neurology. This is different from what we have observed in the past few weeks as we are now seeing admitted patients. A common theme across these patients is that they oftentimes do not yet have a definitive diagnoses, so they needed to undergo a series of examinations, hence the need for the hospital stay.
A patient that we visited every day in the past week was a 13 year old boy presenting with dizziness, headaches, nausea, and abnormal ocular movements with a velocity and trajectory that resembles what it should be when the eyes are closed. The cause of the symptoms were unknown as all the examinations completed so far showed no signs of abnormalities. The most likely suspicion at this point in time, according to the team of rounding physicians, is cerebellum abnormalities. On Friday when we last saw the patient, the patient is suspected to now have influenza as well.
Last Monday also marked the premiere of the F1 movie. As a huge F1 fan, I bought IMAX tickets immediately and brought Rei (a F1 newbie who I may have convinced to start following F1 after this movie) along. I thoroughly enjoyed the cinematic of the movie along with the many cameos of current F1 drivers, but if you are a technical fan like I am, make sure you don’t look into too much detail. The Spanish subtitles and Costa Rican crowd movie experience is one I will definitely miss! We also later found out that movies in Costa Rica only stay in theaters for 2 weeks, which we thought were insanely short when compared to the US!
This past weekend, Alex, Connor, Rei, and I visited the infamous Manuel Antonio National Park. As soon as we arrived near its proximity, we instantly started to feel the humidity and got to experience what I had thought was going to be the weather for the whole of Costa Rica in these summer months.
What is special about Manuel Antonio is that it is one of the few beaches in the world that not only has beaches and coral reefs together, but also, rainforests. It has a wealth of wildlife, where we got to see sloths, crabs, Capuchins (fortunately from a distance and without them trying to steal our goods), deers, and many more animals that we were not able to name. We also visited two different beaches (one within the national park, and another public beach named Biesanz) and explored Quepos (the nearest town). We were very lucky as it did not rain at all throughout the entire weekend and we were able to make the most out of our time at the beaches with a much needed relaxing weekend. We were less fortunate on our way back to Escazu but got to experience peak Costa Rica traffic. What we thought was a 2.5 hr car ride turned into a 3.5 hr car ride. It doesn’t sound too bad in writing but it felt like a 5 hour ride when all of us were squeezed together in the back of the car. We rewarded ourselves with the local chain “La Tortilleria” as soon as we arrived and continued our nightly TV show tradition by watching the latest season of Squid Game.
And that’s a wrap for this week! See you all next week for more adventures.
