After a great deal of sleep, I woke up for medicine and a pancake breakfast at 7:15am, feeling better than I had in many days. Although I felt well enough to go to work, my productivity was very low because of the drag of sickness. However, one significant task we performed was to completely remove and dispose of a dental chair and all of its ridiculously heavy components, e.g. arms and booms, suction vacuums, etc. In order to move heavy equipment around the hospital, we use a retired patient cart/bed. However, when we were moving one of the heavy parts of the chair, the cart hit a bump in the brick pavement outside and one of the swivel wheels turned sideways and then deformed its axle as a result of the cart’s continued forward motion. For the rest of the way, we had to lift on the cart in the broken place to keep the weight on the working wheels. For some reason, a camera man from a local news station was there, and he whipped out his camcorder to film our debacle. He then interviewed Esau, a man who works with replenishing and transporting oxygen tanks, although the interview likely had nothing to do with the dental chair.
While trying to take inventory of the maternity ward, we briefly and accidentally crossed a sanitation boundary, definitely catching the attention of the staff. One of them then brought us two patient monitors that weren’t working properly, while the other, named Allen, stayed to talk to us for a while in English. “I’ve studied English a lot and graduated from a bilingual high school in my hometown, Tegucigalpa, but I never get to practice it.” The ease in speaking to him was a great relief for Tom and I, especially since the focus I needed to speak in Spanish had been noticeably lacking while I was sick. “I’ve been studying really hard for the Kaplan test (MCAT), and I’m hoping to go to medical school in the States.” He then told us more about his educational background and prospects. “I was going to go to a university in the United States, having applied and been accepted. The thing is, since I’m not a U.S. national, the price for me would be the full $60,000 per year, and I couldn’t afford it. Here, we pay around $500 per year.”
Later in the day, I made a shocking discovery which motivated me to rehydrate more vigorously: I had lost ten pounds over the weekend (Jairo has a scale in his shop). Also my blood pressure was lower than I had ever seen before, 108/70, and since my pulse was high at 90 bpm, the low blood pressure could not have been caused by my blood pressure medicine, which lowers blood pressure by lowering pulse. All told, I drank three cans of apple juice, a liter of Gatorade, and three liters of water today—good progress, but still not quite enough. At lunch, I was again feeling averse to eating at all, and Jairo tried to convince me to go to the emergency room. When I resisted, explaining to him that I had just begun another course of antibiotics, he actually grabbed me by the arm and pulled until I followed voluntarily. “Your eyes look bad right now,” he said. “Don’t worry; it’s no problem to go to the ER. Let’s go.”
By chance, Allen, who I had met earlier, was working in the ER when we went in there. “Oh, yes. I already know your sickness from our conversation earlier,” he said. I then explained once again that I had just started new drugs after finishing the old ones. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “The thing is, when they only give you three days’ worth, the bacteria become resistant. You need five days, and you can take these with what you’re already taking.” Although we weren’t able to fix the patient monitors today, I finally seem to be getting better, and now look forward to working on them more tomorrow.
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