Last Week in Costa Rica

Apart from general rest and rehab this past weekend, we rallied on Sunday night and made dinner for ourselves and the crew at the ranch.  We made homemade pasta and raviolis stuffed with squash for 40+ people.  It was an event.

Every day this week is packed.  Today, we are completing instruction in improvised litter construction.  Then, unbeknownst to the students, they are heading out this afternoon with GPS coordinates and gear for a long scenario.   They will be dispatched to a large wild area on the border of the local national park - a site they've never visited before with a maze of trails depicted only on hand-drawn maps.  They will encounter at least 4 victims with multiple injuries from tumbling off a 20m high waterfall, slipping on slick rock in the stream, sliding down an unstable slope headfirst, and some other horrendous malady we haven't decided on yet.  The students will, of course, have less gear than they'd like, less outside help than they'd like, and fewer radios than they'd like, but they will show off their true talents in improvising care in a wilderness setting. The scenario is planned to last well into the evening, so utter darkness will also factor into their challenges.  Hence the potential need for celestial navigation (picture below).

Tomorrow, students will be involved in teaching wilderness first aid skills to the 20 students at the local high school. Some of our students will be busting out their rusty Spanish language talents and we'll also use the translation skills of our own Fernando Giaccaglia, as well as several Ranch interns.  Our students will spend the morning prepping to teach wound cleaning and management, pressure wraps for significant bleeds (caused here by things like machetes), burn care, foreign-body airway obstruction & clearing airways, and improvised litters: all things likely to come in handy for families here, things which can rely heavily on demonstration and less on verbal communication, and which might spark an interest in first aid or medicine amongst the local kids.  We might also teach hands-only cpr, just so we can crank up the volume on Stayin' Alive.

Students will be washing and ironing their nicest clothes later today (??)  in preparation to clean themselves up so they can participate in the health clinics in Zapaton on Thursday and here in Mastatal on Friday.  We welcome Dr. Greg Moore, his wife Lori, Fred Westering (a Physician Assistant) for their contributions to the clinic.