Haiti - Routine

     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 couple other devices. The V60s were done by lunch and by lunch I mean my apple and granola bar. I had decided to skip lunch because the portions were so large I felt I only needed breakfast and dinner. I was surprised to find out David regularly only eats dinner.
     We started on the Respironics Esprits, another model of ventilator, after lunch, but also had to work our way through the service manual step by step. Unfortunately we got stuck on one of the tests near the end of the day which was frustrating for me. I reached out to a couple of my coworkers via email for some advice to be ready for the next day. On the walk back to the residence two salesmen approached us and introduced themselves. They were very friendly and although they had nothing to show us at the time they wanted us to plan to see them later in the week. David and I both planned to buy a few things to take back home so we agreed we would at least see what they had for sale when it appeared.
     Back at the residence, we met Sister Maurine who was an English English teacher. She was originally from England and still had the accent to prove it. Then I read some more, sent a few emails and David persuaded me to take a closer look at the parade that day. The gate had been shut to the residence so we watched through the bars as all sorts of people and vehicles passed by. We noticed a few kids inside the residence lot and David suggested giving some candy to them since he had brought nearly 30 pounds. They were excited to get some candy and I thought they might ask us later in the week when they saw us. I sat outside until dinner and realized I had few bug bites - my first ones. I worried a little about the potential for malaria and tried to be more careful about sitting outside in the evenings. Dinner was penne pasta with meat and a side of tomato with lettuce. In hindsight, this was probably the most normal day I had in Haiti.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Preparation for Haiti

     If you're reading this then you've probably heard that I recently traveled to Haiti. Before I start to share about my experience there I feel I need to mention a few things first. For starters, I work as a biomedical equipment technician at a hospital in Indy for a company called Trimedx. I like to tell people "the doctors and nurses fix the people, but I fix the medical equipment." I enjoy serving the patients in this way and have quite a variety of things to fill my days at work.      The Trimedx Foundation is a non-profit that came out of Trimedx and they help connect and send us technicians to hospitals around the world that need their equipment fixed or tested. I had the opportunity to volunteer last year at a warehouse in Illinois where donated medical equipment needed to be fixed or tested before sending overseas. Sadly, parts and supplies are much harder to obtain in the hospitals overseas and it's more cost effective to do this work in the U....
Read more

Haiti - Challenges

Image
     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.     ...
Read more

Haiti - Setting Up

Image
     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...
Read more