28 June 2012
Hey all!
These four days with Dr. Richards-Kortum and Dr. Oden felt like one big blur! These women are always on turbo-speed…I love it!
On Monday Kathleen and I got to sit in on a meeting that Dr. Richards-Kortum, Dr. Oden, and Jocelyn had with the Vice Principle of the Polytechnic school right beside Queens Hospital. It was really awesome hearing the future steps that will be made with the Bubble CPAP.
We all had lunch at Hotel Victoria (which was not a hotel at all); it was a hop-skip-jump away from the office and I had no idea it even existed! After lunch Dr. Woods and I went to scope out the storage room where all of the broken and miscellaneous equipment go to see if anything was salvageable. We diagnosed many machines and took inventory and decided it would be best to list a few now and fix as many as we could while he was still here.
On Tuesday I started off the day with the morning meeting then went straight to the storage room for some fun work! All-in-all we fixed a scale, a plug of a suction machine, a surgery light that had a severed cord, and a torn hose inside of a suction machine…SO MUCH FUN!!!
When we got back to the lodge we hung out with our friends before Bible study. Kabula has blackouts at least 3 times a week; Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday all around the same time. During this particular blackout we all did something so amazing…had a UKULELE NIGHT!!! We all had known that one of our friends was President of the Ukulele club during high school…but we didn’t know she brought her ukulele and song books with her! I’m so sad we didn’t start this earlier; blackouts are going to be unexciting once more when she leaves.
Wednesday was much like Tuesday; went to the storage room to work on devices and had lunch with the professors at Hotel Victoria. Today, however, we also ate with the CPAP nurses. It was really nice to hear the nurse’s perspectives of using the CPAP machines and how much they care about the study.
When lunch was over Dr. Woods and I did A LOT of running around Queens. So the task was to make a frame for one of the resuscitation tables in the neonatal nursery; from lunch we walked to the maintenance building to see if they had spare tables or frames…they had neither. We then walked to the carpenter’s building to see if they had wood to spare to make a frame. They had wood so we went to the nursery to get measurements of the table. We then walked back to the carpenter’s building to give him the measurements; he told us he’d be done in 40 minutes time…so we went back to the nursery to see if we could fix a resuscitation table heater in the meantime. We went back to the carpenter’s building to pick up the frame then attached it to the table back at the nursey…SO MUCH WALKING!!! I definitely learned the value of emails this day.
When I got back to Kabula I watched 10 Things I Hate About You in the TV lounge with my friends.
Thursday I woke up feeling a bit ill, but I went to work anyways thinking it would pass. When I got to the hospital Dr. Kennedy went over the library inventory with Dr. Woods and me; we showed him all of the equipment we had fixed and he pointed out all of the remaining equipment that were worth trying to fix and the ones that were not.
By this time of the day it hurt to walk. Jocelyn, Kathleen, Dr. Woods and I went to Cure Café to eat lunch; once I ate I was absolutely miserable, so I took a taxi back to Kabula to rest. I woke up when everyone got back from work and attempted to cook dinner, but the smell of food alone made me nauseous.
All of our friends sat in our living room to await the blackout, but the power never cut…and we waited for nearly an hour. At this point I was impatient, so I lit the candles and turned out the living room light so we could commence our ukulele night…once again, it was amazing.
After we determined the power was never going out, everyone dispersed to make dinner; we all came back together to watch Friends. I still had no appetite but I forced myself to eat a sandwich. First bit of traveler’s sickness…pretty bad…but it could be worse.
With love,
Bridget
Things that were new to me:
30 Rock
Friends
Traveler’s sickness
Things I wish I had:
My CJ Kliff teddy to curl up with
A budget for buying replacement parts for the broken medical equipment
For my parents—I promise I’m eating:
For breakfast: Toast, jam, eggs / and Toast, jam, banana in oatmeal
For lunch: chicken, rice, and stew (Hotel Victoria) / Double Decker sandwich (Cure Café) / PB&J sandwich
For dinner: Spaghetti and meat sauce (Bible study) / Pasta and veggies / PB&J with banana sandwich