Day 10: What a wonderful Wednesday

We had another day full of success! We arrived at the hospital as usual in the morning and continued to work on the ventilators and other equipment. The most exciting part of the morning was fixing another ventilator, especially after we thought that the particular machine we were working on was a lost cause. This ventilator in question originally wouldn't even turn on. 

The screen wouldn't light up, no buttons functioned and the shrill alarm that always sounds whenever a broken vent is turned on didn't even sound. We started with looking at the CPU disk, a part of the circuit board. Knowing a different vent was a lost cause as a result of an internal leak we got out our tools and opened them both up. We took the circuit board from the one vent to exchange with the other and gained functionality of the buttons and alarm and, using typical troubleshooting skills we switched different screens and, after dozens of screws, loose wires, matching and reseding connectors the vent came to life. Just to make sure, we got it approved by Mainor, the respiratory therapist, who was likewise excited to see the progress we had made. There is literally nothing better than knowing you have brought what was essentially a broken and dead piece of equipment back to life. 

Mission accomplished

Feeling great after taping yet another "funciona" sign on the newly working vent, we moved on to sort through yet another pile of broken machinery. We explored the mystery that is the broken equipment room in the corner of the new ICU.  From it, we salvaged another pulse oximeter, and also managed to find the missing part that was the only reason that it was not working, so we got that machine working too.

A lot of the equipment we've found is in extremely bad shape. It's clear someone else attempted to repair it or mettled with it the past

Our guinea pig

A nurse brought us three more ECG's today as well, but we weren't quite as successful with those.  Unfortunately, two of them were missing parts from their printing mechanism. It is completely possible that the devices themselves were functioning fine, however there's no way of knowing because they don't have the capabilities to print the output information.  We used Huy as our guinea pig to test the last one, but still could not figure out what was wrong with it.  Regardless, we are optimistic about the other successes.

After our day at the hospital, Andres, one of the residents, was going to take us to Antigua Guatemala to sightsee. However, Andres is now also sick.  He looked pale and exhausted, but despite that, walked all the way to the ICU to tell us personally that he could no longer take us to Antigua but that Carlos (Dr. Morales) and Daniel (a doctor at a different hospital) could take us instead.  We are ever grateful to him  and wishing him a speedy recovery!

Antigua itself was absolutely beautiful.  It used to be the capital of Guatemala, but after a devastating earthquake, the capital was relocated to Guatemala City, where it remains currently. 

A view from the street, if you look closely you'll find a flat area on the mountain with a cross

 Now Antigua is a lovely little town, with gorgeous old churches, colorful, squat little buildings, and amazing restaurants.  It is exactly what it's name indicates; Old Guatemala.  We first stopped by a colorful market, filled with vendors with bright stands of handmade trinkets and souvenirs. We used our bargaining skills and walked away with bags of goodies. 

Mayan craft market

We then went to a traditional Guatemalan restaurant, where they served the dishes directly from large clay pots complimented by homemade tortillas, tamales and, of course, guacamole.

Some of the typical meat-based soups

 On our way back to Guatemala City, we stopped at a placed called El Mirador, situated on a small mountain overlooking the valley of Guatemala City.  The view was gorgeous! The picture certainly does not do justice to the sight of the sprawling city lights surrounded by the night sky and the bright moon.  It was a fantastic way to end an already amazing day.  

Day 3: ¡Campeones!

We are proud to announce that we have officially repaired 1 ECG and 3 respiratory ventilators!

We started our third day working in Roosevelt hospital like the days before, arriving by 8AM to set-up and immediately diving into work. Today we took on the ECG first. After running more diagnostics and tests using a manual we had found online, we were sure that the machine internally was functioning properly reassuring our assumption that there was a problem with leads and/or electrodes. Instead of testing the ECG on a patient like yesterday we sacrificed Ananya as our test patient. We completed a successful test, confirmed our results with one of our favorite residents, Carlos, and were able to speak with nurses about the future use of the ECG. We had the opportunity to review exactly what issues we encountered and how to maintain the ECG in the future especially in terms of sanitation and correct preparatory measures. We hope to assist in the transition of Roosevelt Hospital towards the usage of single usage electrodes. It is vital that our efforts are sustainable. Within minutes she took the ECG away to use for the rest of the day.

            Within a half hour of repairing the first ECG we received another. This new model was extremely different from the first. It has a completely different manufacturer with buttons and electronic readings all in English-a clear sign it had been donated to Roosevelt from another country. The electronic leads were clearly damaged and we are in search for new leads and desperate for a manual, we’ll see what we can turn up.

            Of course, that left us to continue our work on the ventilators. After a couple hours and a visit from Hector, a maintenance worker who greeted us warmly and confirmed that creating an organizational system for equipment and parts would be incredibly useful and beneficial, we were stuck. We had not anticipated working on ventilators at all and therefore weren’t entirely confident whether our repairs were sufficient to safely test the ventilator on a patient. We were still receiving an error code but all alarms had stopped. Mainor, a respiratory therapist graciously agreed to help us out and confirmed that the vent was ready to go and the error was solely found because we didn’t have a patient connected. This was the case with 2 other ventilators as well meaning a couple of things:

1            1)   we successfully repaired 3 ventilators

2            2)   There are 3 new ventilators for the hospital to use (which is vital because they are severely lacking vents and many residents are stuck hand ventilating patients all night)

3            3)   We now have more knowledge we can use to repair the other ventilators and to share with staff, to again ensure our work is sustainable.

             We left the hospital pretty content and ready to watch the world cup with the residents. They are a great group to hang out with but also to learn from. On our way there we passed the observation rooms outside of the ICU where Carlos pointed out a man who had been there for 7 years. He requires an automatic ventilator that the hospital cannot supply so sits in the same bed hooked to machinery watching soccer day after day. His quality of life has been so severely reduced as a result of a lack of resources and funding. Also as we were leaving, we noticed that every car is stopped before exiting hospital grounds to ensure that there are no residents or staff that are stealing equipment or drugs from the hospital.

        We’re all pleased and excited about our day. It is an incredible feeling to know we’ve already made an impact after three days working in Roosevelt and having success fixing equipment really serves as a motivating force to keep working, researching and getting our hands dirty everyday. Besides, Argentina is moving on to the final game, what else could we ask for?