Kirstin’s Blog

lack of sleep…

So in the last few days I have had some crazy stuff happening. On Thurs I was once again “kidnapped” by the residents an we went to Ecoparque which is sort of a nature reserve about 15 min from Shell. We went on a sort of obstacle course which was up in the air on wires. We were strapped into a harness and had to climb across all kinds of different wire setups. It was so much fun, I was having a blast and even though it was difficult at times I didn’t have much trouble at all, the residents however were freaking out about the height an having difficulty. They were in shock that I was just fine. A couple of them actually fell at the hardest part of it, at which point everyone was laughing hysterically. They started calling me a monkey, haha. We then came back to Shell for dinner- we got plantains with cheese made by the version of the Philly grease trucks here- people just cooking along side the road. It was really good. Then we went to charaoke in Puyo, and when it was about 10 or 11 at night and I thought the night was over we left charaoke (at which I did sing- Shakira’s Underneath your clothes and then with Evelin Britney’s Baby one more time- I can’t believe it either, but I’m here and it was fun, lol) we went to a dance place. We danced until about 2 am. It was so much fun but I was already dreading my on call day after not so much sleep that night.

On call on Fri turned out to be worse than I could have imagined patient load wise. We had several traumas over night, the worst being a man who had been driving drunk and hit a bus, thank God that no one else but him was injured. He had broken his femur into 3 oddly shaped pieces (the femur is the bone in the thigh). This is a bad bone to break- it’s so hard to fix and requires basically a metal plate for life and cast for a long time. The trauma surgeon was called, and decided to operate that night. It was already 11:30 when he was called, an he was in surgery elsewhere still. There was a woman who was ready to give birth, so I got to help deliver the baby at 12:15 Sat morning. That was fun, and the baby girl was just a healthy cute little thing. Of course since I helped with the delivery I got to do the paperwork for her admission, which meant even though Isabel was going into the surgery for the guy I still couldnt sleep in order to get the admission done and switch out with her later if the surgery took as long as we thought it would. We had had a steady stream of patients in the ER all morning and afternoon, mostly nothing too crazy, but just no time to sleep or rest, with 20 min breaks for lunch and dinner. I did manage to get 1 hr of sleep before switching out with Isabel at 3 am. We finished the surgery around 5ish, had the pt stable and back in his room at 5:30. I was able to go back and get another hr of sleep before we had to see more pts in the morning and finish up any other paperwork before the next group started their on call day. It was definitely great for learning, but I was so tired and my brain didn’t want to work in Spanish at points, haha.

By the time we had finished sign out and everything it was about 10 am on Saturday, which gave me 2 hrs to sleep before I had to get ready to go with Daniela, and several others to a hike to a different waterfall. I was still tired, but didn’t want to miss out on the trip and I am so glad I made that choice! The trip out there was rough on the bus- there were no seats so we were standing trying to hold on and not fall over around all the twists and turns at a higher speed than they probly should have been. The hike was beautiful, the way to the waterfall was all downhill, down many slopes and steps, the view was gorgeous the whole way. We were just having a great time all joking and chatting the whole way. At one point there was a bridge to cross (5 people at a time) to get an amazing view of the waterfall. There was another area that for $1 you could climb up to be right next to or even behind the waterfall! That was awesome. One of my favorite parts of the hike was that there were all these signs about throwing trash in the bins, preserving nature, but one sign in particular was just so surprising and cool that I had to take a picture of it- “Esta preparado para una sorpresa- Dios existe!!!” (Be prepared for a surprise- God exists!!!) This one was on the way up the climb to the waterfall itself! I loved that. I got some great pictures and made the climb all the way up to behind the waterfall which was extremely difficult through this kinda carved out area of rock- I had to crawls through parts practically! I was almost completely soaked and dirty, but it was so worth it. Then we climbed back down to the regular path, back up the mountain and went to a restaurant where we got some snacks- yuca fries, nachos with guacamole and guava juice. the ride back on the bus we were able to sit down too. I am so glad I went.

So I will be finally putting up the ridiculous number of pictures that I have to post today, slept extremely well last night after the climb back up the mountain from the waterfall. Today I am going to attempt to make pancakes from scratch for dinner with Daniela and Marlin and possibly a few others. I found a seemingly easy recipe online for strawberry vanilla pancakes as well as an easy maple syrup substitute recipe, so I am hoping that this all goes well, haha. I have really enjoyed getting to know some of the people here though, and will miss them when I leave the end of this week. I can’t believe it is already my last week here. It has gone so fast, but I have had a great time and learned so much in this short time!