Travel Adventures

     I slept in a little Thursday morning (6:15am instead of 6am) and took a nice warm shower, but tried to keep it short. I think we had better water pressure there than I do at home in Indy. Breakfast consisted of eggs over hard, fruit, and toast. After a short delay waiting for the key again, which we expected, we got to work. The biomeds brought us a few defibrillators and we made that our priority expecting they would be returned to service as soon as possible, but they explained that the hospital staff don’t have training and won’t usually use them if there is an emergency. Needless to say, we were “shocked” to hear this. I don’t even know if they have conductive gel for the paddles used to deliver the shock. It’s hard for them to get parts for the equipment down here and often it’s something as simple as the replacing the battery like for the AEDs. Similar to the defibs, but completely battery powered, these AEDs were no use with dead batteries.     ...

     Wednesday began very similar to Tuesday: woke, dressed, Lumarc offered us coffee, went to breakfast, met the biomeds upstairs at the hospital. I don’t mean to discount those things at all, but if you've read my previous posts I'll spare you the details. I should mention that one of the first thoughts I had was gratefulness for the many things God has and continues to provide for me.      The work we had to do seemed easier. I heard back from Kevin, my coworker in Indy, and his advice helped point us in the right direction. Soon we found the problem with the settings on the test that had caused my frustration the day before. We reviewed the PM procedure with the biomeds and had them do most of it with some instruction. One of them doesn’t speak English as well and I had to keep that in mind as I gave him direction. It helped to point to the values in the service manual. Can you imagine having to translate all those numbers?      Some...

     Compared to my first full day, Tuesday seemed much shorter. This tends to happen when I don't experience as many new things and my perception of time changes. However I started the day off with a shower and was extra thankful for the hot water. How often do you take  for granted  hot water? I spent some time reading through Psalms which is a great way to start any day and had some coffee again brewed by Lumarc. I know he's had a lot of experience working with the volunteers in the past, but I appreciate how considerate he was of us foreigners.      David and I went to breakfast which consisted of fresh papaya juice, fruit, hard bioled egg and toast. From there we went across the street to the biomed shop and waited for the biomeds because we needed a key in order to access the room we were working in. While I showed the preventative maintenance procedure again to one of the biomeds, David was able to fix some leaks we had encountered on a co...

     I slept well the first night and as I lay in bed I noticed the day brightening. Then there came a knock on my door and David asked if I was up yet. I thought to myself “What time is it?” as I glanced down at my phone and realized my alarm had gone off 40 minutes ago but made almost no sound. I mumbled something about being awake to David and promptly got out of bed. Fortunately, we had plenty of time since my alarm was set for 6am and breakfast wasn’t until 7:30am. We were allowed to use the scrubs stocked in the residence building so I tried to find a matching set that fit well. Maybe it was because I woke up too quickly, but I realized I was taking a long time to decide what scrubs to choose so I grabbed a medium set and tried it on. In the meantime Lumarc stopped by, greeted us and offered us some coffee which he had prepared in his office next door. Coffee sounded great even though I wasn’t tired. I had feared my body would complain if I didn’t get coffee and di...