Day 9: Week Two Begins!

A guest blog entry from Ananya and Caroline:

Today we set up camp in the old ICU, which is now empty and is being used as a storage area for old, broken equipment.  It was great to see that the new ICU, which was our work area last year, is now in use, after much petitioning on Carolyn’s and others parts.

Entering the old ICU which was fully functioning about 6 months ago.

This area has become another warehouse for broken equipment

With the help of our new maintenance friend Horacio, we began work on two incubators. We determined One  could not be fixed, as it is ancient, and had evidently been previously tampered with.  There were screws missing, things were put back together incorrectly, and parts of the circuit board has been detached and broken. The second incubator was successfully repaired, after much battery work and sodering by Mark and Ananya!  

Working hard.

Good work, team!

We were also given another ECG from the pediatric ICU and two monitors from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to look at.  We are still working to determine exactly what is wrong with each, and plan to continue working on them tomorrow.  Unfortunately, poor Horacio got stuck in an elevator trying to bring us the equipment.  This, along with no working lights in the old ICU, exemplify the daily problems that the people of Roosevelt have to face. 

On a happy note, we visited Gastro to deliver and officially donate some pulse oximeters and a blood pressure cuff.  Our three favorite nurses were happy to see us and told us that both monitors and the endoscopes we worked on last week are officially working!  Together we worked with them to test the blood pressure monitor we saw last week.  It can now also be used. 

A monitor we fixed now in use.

Testing the Blood Pressure monitor we fixed, it worked!

Afterwards we got some delightful homemade popsicles from the food stand outside the hospital.  Everyone enjoyed the delicious mango.  For dinner we returned to La Chapinita for traditional guatemalan fare and Mark was finally able to get that Hard Rock Guatemala pen that he wanted  We look forward to another productive day tomorrow!