Day 6

Day 6

Good Morning Everyone. Oh my, I can’t even explain the day that I had.  I woke up very early around 6:08 or so, showered and got ready for my day. We had breakfast and the bus picked us up around 7 or so. We headed to a place that is very similar to a small clinic where we get to observe community health nurses on the job! It was so much fun. Matt, Gupe and I climbed one of the mountains with one of the nurses to visit families in their homes! The nurse’s main job today was to make sure that all families were caught up on their vaccinations. This job is very important for the community health nurse because there are a lot of different bacteria’s and germs that can be spread out through this population. Everyday this nurse walks 2 miles up a mountain that is just a small rocky dirt path and she wears long pants and a long shirt to protect her from the sun, which by the way- it was about 85 degrees the day we went. With her she carries (up the mountain everyday!) a FULL backpack of patient/family files, sun block, blood pressure cuff, stethoscope and many other things. She also carries a big blue lunch cooler about 5-7 lbs, and more patient files and records. The nurse herself only weighed about 100lbs soaking wet, and she does this every day, and she told me that she LOVES her job. SHE LOVES DOING THIS. I was just so amazed at her enthusiasm. Most of the houses that I saw today were just made of very thin plywood and pieces of tin lay over the roof. Some had electric, water, TVs and radios and others did not. The nurse would also do an assessment of every family and what resources that they had accessible to them (such as mentioned above). While we walked around with the nurse, she let us take blood pressures and watch her give injections. In the hospitals in the states we use a disposable sterile field, and we rub the patients arm with alcohol to clean the area before an injection is given, and we also don gloves. Here in Costa Rica they have a reusable sterile field. It is a sheet of plastic that they place all the injection stuff on to prepare it. To prepare the patient’s arm- they use water and a cotton ball. After she is done, she placed the sharps in an old plastic shampoo bottle. She would then wash the sterile field with alcohol and put it back in her back. They do not use gloves here for injections, and there was very minimal blood if any at all when giving injections so maybe it isn’t necessary here. Many people who lived in the mountains had dogs, chickens, roosters and other various farm animals that were really neat to see! We visited about 5 out of the 8 houses we needed to see because 3 of the residents were not home. We got back to “base” at about 2pm and then my whole class went out to lunch. We went to a little Mexican restaurant, and the food was amazing. I tasted my first margarita EVER, and HATED IT. Ew. I will not be drinking one of those in my life. For lunch I had these really good Taco things that I do not remember the name of, but it was just the right amount and it was very good. After lunch we loaded on the bus and headed back to the hostel, but made a quick pit stop at Walmart to buy some things for the hot springs and beach this weekend. It was nuts trying to find things in Walmart, Dad. Everything was in a different place, it did not look like the Walmarts at home, and they had a whole upstairs labeled “Zapatos” which is shoes- AN UPSTAIRS FOR SHOES. How would you like delivering here Dad? It had so much more clothing and stuff! I loved it…just kind of hard to navigate around the store. After Walmart, we headed back to the hostel and by the time we got back dinner was ready for us to have. I do not remember what dinner was called but it was amazing! Beans, rice, yummmmmmmmy! Very VERY traditional. I will be posting about Friday, Sat, and Sun all in the same blog because we did excursions – More to come soon. Sorry that I have not posted in a long time, we have been away and there has been no internet at the house. 

Love,
Kara <3