Monday, July 9, 2012
Despite my mobile access to internet, I have been falling
a bit behind on my blog-writing. Sorry
about that! I’ll hit the highlights.
Work this week has been rewarding. We put that infant incubator we’ve been
working on back into service. There’s
still something wrong with it, but we’ve figured out a way to keep it
functioning normally. Victor, our boss,
agrees that it’s a better alternative than shipping it off to Managua, where
they’ll probably not find a solution for a few months, if ever. I call it a success. After poking around a few fetal dopplers with
hopelessly broken probes ($100 replacement not likely when a stethoscope and
wristwatch function just fine) and an ECG with severed leads, the maintenance
staff showed us a problem they’d been having for about a year with their waste
water handling system. They wondered if
we could fix it, and we were very up front that we’d only ever been trained on
medical equipment, so don’t expect too much.
Instead, we translated the manual for the automated water level sensing
switches, which were only in English and Japanese. It’s good to know we can be of many different
kinds of help, even when there aren’t machines for us to fix. If we ever run out of things to do, I’m sure
there’s a pile of work waiting for us in that department.
Today we spent a while talking with our maintenance guys
(rather than working in solitude), and we learned quite a bit. We knew that the majority of the medical
equipment in the hospital was donated from Japan when the hospital was built,
and that with the donated equipment were manuals in Spanish. But it’s just the medical equipment that’s
Japanese. Other machines that
maintenance is responsible for (i.e. the water pumps, washers, dryers) are from
the US or elsewhere. When they break,
they often don’t even have the manual.
In the case of one of the dryers, they were able to rig up a solution
without it. For a faulty washer, they weren’t so lucky. Its faulty board is sitting in Managua now,
and a replacement would cost thousands of dollars. For the US machines, they say parts are sometimes
available. Victor said that replacement
parts for the donated Japanese equipment are almost impossible to get ahold
of.
I have been under the impression that there is a seeming
lack of broken equipment in the hospital, perhaps because it’s just such a new
hospital and things haven’t had an opportunity to break yet, but today we got a
hint of the real situation. Things break
all the time. Maintenance gets them back
to as good of condition as they can, or if they’re just broken they might just
stay where they are (a thousand pound washer would be tough to move to the
maintenance workshop). We haven’t had to
venture out much yet, as they’ve been keeping us reasonably busy. It’s kind of cool we’ll get to discover new
things about the hospital, probably right up until the time we leave! Though hopefully not too late to help, if we
can.
I really enjoyed visiting Granada this weekend. It was so great to see everyone again! Talking to everyone about what we were doing
in our hospitals was a great way to get ideas about things to do in ours. Among other things, we viewed cool colonial
architecture, sampled the local cuisine (dirt cheap, by the way), and took a
boat tour to the islets of millionaires.
To anyone who may travel abroad in the future, I advise
you check the expiration date of not only your passport, but your other
lifeline, your debit card, before leaving.
Mine expired at the end of June and forced me to impose upon my fellow
travelers. Lesson learned.
Next weekend we go to Ometepe! We’re taking a 3-day
weekend. We convinced our boss by
promising to pick up a few things in Managua while we’re there. Helping the hospital and helping us enjoy our
weekend vacations, I call it a success.
So much for hitting the highlights. Until the next novel!
You're being very helpful translating the manuals! That's a gift that will keep on giving long after you're gone, eh? And it's wonderful that you can still be of help while enjoying those weekend trips by picking up stuff for them & comparing notes with the others to be able to work more effectively when you return :) Such a positive experience, honey...so proud of you!!
ReplyDelete<3 <3 <3 <3 Ma
Expired debit? I didn't know they expired. I better look at mine! See you soon. I want to hear everything! Are you bringing a Victoria beer home with you?
ReplyDelete