July 27

Sleep last night was difficult. Around midnight, the dog, Petra, began growling and barking with unprecedented urgency, running around the patio at full speed. The amount of racket was such that I wondered if there might be another dog in the yard with whom Petra was fighting. Just then, the dog—growling, yelping, and all—slammed into the window next to my bed. This startled me into sitting up, and glancing outside I saw the little protagonist: a black rat scurrying for dear life. As the noise continued, Maritza, Milania, and La Abuelita woke up and went outside, thinking there may have been a security breach. “What happened? Did you see anything?” I was asked. “There was a rat…Petra saw it,” I said. They began laughing and said, “Crazy dog,”

In the morning I began working on the blood-pressure machine calibration, connecting the pump-bulb, manometer, 500mL container, and the machine using the four-way valve Tom had fabricated from syringes on Monday. The results were discouraging, and the true values followed by the machine’s readings (mmHg) were 0:0, 50:25, 100:88, and 200:200. If the disparity between any of these measurements is greater than 3.0 mmHg, the machine needs calibration. Unfortunately, the procedure labeled “Calibration” in the manual was actually just an accuracy test, as any adjustment to the readings can only be performed by the manufacturer. I returned the machine with a note and an explanation that the blood-pressure function could not be used and that there was nothing more we could do.  

In the office of Maria, who had ridden with us from the airport at San Pedro Sula to Olanchito, I explained the letter I had prepared for CAMO and asked if she could help me prepare it for submission by the hospital director. She checked for factuality and made a couple corrections, and then printed out a copy for me to give to the director.

After much of the morning had passed, we began to worry as to why Julien had not yet arrived and why we were unable to contact him by phone, since he had to check out of his hotel by 1pm. Although he was alive and well when we parted ways the night before, nothing is impossible here. Asking around the hospital for “another white guy”, it became clear that he had not yet arrived. When I ran into José, who had driven Tom and I from San Pedro Sula to Olanchito the first day (a long treck), he stationed a sentinel to watch for Julien at the front door and offered us a ride to the hotel. Julien happened to be leaving just as we arrived, so we brought him to the hospital in style, that is, in an ambulance.

In the back of the ambulance with Julien

Before leaving work today, we took some pictures with Jairo in front of the hospital, scarcely able to believe that a whole month has already passed. Jairo asked a random man to come help us take the photos, but he had never taken a picture before and had some difficulty doing so. Nonetheless, we have some adequate pictures of the building where we spent so much time working.

Back home, we started and finished work on our Honduras experience poster, a file that will be printed as an actual poster for us to use in our presentation to Dr. Malkin, the Board of EWH, and various donors and other persons who will be attending the conference this weekend.