First Week at Hipo

Early Monday morning, Jeff and I made our way to Caminos del Inca, a major street near our depa, to meet up with Hansel so that he could accompany us to the bus stop on the evitamiento for our first day. He pointed out the packed buses zooming by that go all the way to the stop to get off near Hospital National Hipólito Unanue: the green Chinito, yellow and blue lines whose names escaped me. And, if in doubt, we can always quickly ask, “Atarjea?” Ask one potential ride after another passed our stop, we realized that perhaps the stop closest to our place (about a 15 minute walk) is not a major one. The bus we finally waved down was sardine can-full, or, as they say here, snug as fósforos in a match box. It amazes me how many bodies are constantly moving up and down major roads and highways here. Craziness. I grabbed onto the open door bars to haul myself up after Jeff and Hansel, slightly panicked because the bus started moving before my feet left the ground. In the crowded space, an old man played a Simon and Garfunkel rendition on his flute, and Jeff and I smiled at each other. Although we’d been cold earlier in the morning, we immediately overheated in the bus. We awkwardly attempted to take off our jackets under our backpacks without elbowing anyone’s face, while holding on to polls to maintain our balance in the abruptly stop-starting flow of traffic. Hansel cooly pulled out his sci-fi book and read standing. 45 creeping minutes later we got off and walked through the El Augustino neighborhood to the hospital. Even though we moved to Surco with the intention of minimizing our daily commute, it unfortunately still adds up to just over an hour each way. For now, the novelty makes it fun, and on the return we usually get seats the whole way. A good opportunity to relax with a podcast or music :)
At the Socios office at Hipólito, we starting working on projects related to patient follow-up in regards to where they are in their 2-year study involvement, adverse events, comorbidities, and medication adherence. We spent our time looking through large paper charts, familiarizing ourselves with the way the information is organized, putting some of the data into spreadsheets, and trying to decipher doctor notes. Never thought I would feel so grateful for electronic medical records, but it turns out they’re quite useful. Most of our work this week would be superfluous with the kind of infrastructure we’re used to in Rochester. In any case, though, it was very useful to us to be able to spend a lot of time reviewing charts because they helped us better understand the logistics of this study. While we continue to become acquainted with this trial, we’re trying to come up with some ideas of side-projects we could work on. Maybe an analysis of adherence patterns, for example.
Recent update from yesterday: Jeff found a gold mine of a plant nursery and we now have loads of succulents and big leafy greenies all over our apartment. It’s lookin pretty dang good in here :) We proudly showed off last night to our volunteer friends that work in the Socios office we were at previously. Made some Andre mush and pineapple milkshakes, and we introduced them to Dixit! In a bit we’ll meet up with them for another session of yoga in the park before we venture out to find some tapestries to decorate the walls with.