Today I visited the girls at Machame Hosptial. Since Machame was my hospital last year, it was great coming back again.
I took them to a nice lunch at the Protea Hotel about 10 km down from Machame Hospital. It was such a nice place it took me by surprise. If you ever find yourself climbing Kilimanjaro and want a hotel close to the Machame Gate of the National Park, this is the hotel you want to book. It's like a little paradise retreat in the heart of Africa.
After lunch we kept trying to catch the dala dala back up to Machame hospital to work but all of them were full (where full means people hanging on to the outside of the van!). A group of kids kept us company as we waited. They made our day much more interesting.
After we finally got back to the hospital (by catching a ride down to the main junction then getting a semi-full dala dala back up) we got to work. The girls did not have very many things to fix yet but I told them it takes time for the staff to build up a trust in them. Most of the staff don't like handing over their equipment to what they see as outsiders. But during their 3rd week or so I expect that the girls will get inundated with equipment after they proved themselves and gained respect with the staff.
We mainly worked on an ECG machine that kept on producing a very high frequency noise artifact. We narrowed it down to the ECG leads after doing a few tests on ourselves and determining that the Left Arm lead was no good. Based on the I, II, and III orientation, only the II orientation was clean because it did not use the Left Arm lead in it's calculation. The issue is that replacing the leads would cost about $190, which is not possible to replace. There may be another set of leads somewhere in the hospital that could replace the broken ones.
Since it wasn't very cloudy today, Kili decided to show its peak. We went on a little hike to get a good shot of it. I love that it looks pink with the sunset.
Since the girls had a spare bed in their housing, they invited me to stay the night. We did breakfast for dinner with hash browns and french toast. I would say this was a very good first hospital visit. I'll be going to Kibosho tomorrow and I'm hoping that will go as smoothly.
I took them to a nice lunch at the Protea Hotel about 10 km down from Machame Hospital. It was such a nice place it took me by surprise. If you ever find yourself climbing Kilimanjaro and want a hotel close to the Machame Gate of the National Park, this is the hotel you want to book. It's like a little paradise retreat in the heart of Africa.
We all ordered steak medallions with a mushroom sauce. Best meal I ate in Tanzania so far.
After lunch we kept trying to catch the dala dala back up to Machame hospital to work but all of them were full (where full means people hanging on to the outside of the van!). A group of kids kept us company as we waited. They made our day much more interesting.
After we finally got back to the hospital (by catching a ride down to the main junction then getting a semi-full dala dala back up) we got to work. The girls did not have very many things to fix yet but I told them it takes time for the staff to build up a trust in them. Most of the staff don't like handing over their equipment to what they see as outsiders. But during their 3rd week or so I expect that the girls will get inundated with equipment after they proved themselves and gained respect with the staff.
We mainly worked on an ECG machine that kept on producing a very high frequency noise artifact. We narrowed it down to the ECG leads after doing a few tests on ourselves and determining that the Left Arm lead was no good. Based on the I, II, and III orientation, only the II orientation was clean because it did not use the Left Arm lead in it's calculation. The issue is that replacing the leads would cost about $190, which is not possible to replace. There may be another set of leads somewhere in the hospital that could replace the broken ones.
Since it wasn't very cloudy today, Kili decided to show its peak. We went on a little hike to get a good shot of it. I love that it looks pink with the sunset.
Since the girls had a spare bed in their housing, they invited me to stay the night. We did breakfast for dinner with hash browns and french toast. I would say this was a very good first hospital visit. I'll be going to Kibosho tomorrow and I'm hoping that will go as smoothly.
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