Week 4 - Costa Rica

This is the week that the filming begins, and sanity ends!

Monday is the first day of filming, and it mostly goes to plan, apart from some power shortages and fuses blowing due to the difference in wattage between Costa Rica and Australia. Today we shot Cone-headed katydids against Owl butterfly caterpillars. Alan will now be working at the studio from 8am till 6pm Monday to Friday.

The Mini Mall where the studio is located

The set

Malcom frames a shot

Tayen, Saige and I head into Puerto Jimenez with Alan Monday morning to go to the doctors again as Saige’s urinary infection has not improved, and she screams in pain while she is on the toilet. As a result she is not going when she needs to, holding on for as long as possible and so has resorted to peeing her pants. We waited at the doctors for 2 hours, as it’s a first in first served clinic, and Monday mornings are very busy! We saw a different doctor this time, who managed to get me to understand that Saige doesn’t have a urinary infection, but a fungal infection. It’s actually quite amusing as they didn’t know how to say ‘fungal’ in English. In Spanish, it’s hongo, and the best they could do was mushroom! I happened to disagree with the doctor about the fungal infection, but she took away Saige’s antibiotics. I had bought them in to show the doctor what Saige was taking to say that they weren’t working. The doctor prescribed Saige some creams instead. The medical clinic in Pto. Jimenez doesn’t have the facilities to analyse samples; to do that we would need to go to the hospital in Golfito, across the Golfo Dulce.

We took the yellow public bus home from Pto. Jimenez – the girls thought it was great! It travels between Pto. Jimenez and Dos Brazos three times a day, and its nice knowing that I’m not stuck at home all day while Alan has the car at the studio. The bus took around 40 minutes to get to Dos Brazos, then a 25 minute walk home (quicker if I carry Saige!). By car the trip takes around 25 minutes.

Tayen and Saige in front of the yellow bus!

Tuesday and Wednesday we stayed at home, apart from walking up to Steve’s to use his internet connection to check emails. Steve also lent us some larger enclosures to keep herbivorous katydids in, among other things.

Thursday sees us going back to the doctor, as Saige was a lot worse. The creams she was prescribed did nothing, and it is really distressing for everyone to see her in so much pain when on the toilet. We planned to take the midday bus into town, but it didn’t turn up so we got a lift with a local who was travelling into Pto. Jimenez. We also picked up a few other people on the way who were waiting for the bus. We had some lunch with Alan then headed to the clinic. After around an hour wait, we saw yet another doctor (the third in a many visits). After seeing my tears of frustration at not being able to communicate our previous visits and diagnoses, the doctor found someone who could speak English to translate for us. The doctor agreed that Saige had an infection, but as there is no pathology lab in Jimenez, I had to take samples to Golfito to test. He suggested taking a sample right then, then giving Saige a shot of antibiotics, then taking another sample that next day. This sounded fine to me, but the clinic didn’t have any sample cups. So the doctor told me to go to the supermarket to get two Gerber jars. Not knowing what they were or where to find them, I asked a staff member who led me to the baby food section – I needed to buy 2 baby food jars to put Saige’s samples in!! I got back to the doctors with the jars where they were cleaned and hopefully sterilised before the sample was taken, then Saige was put on an IV antibiotic drip. Saige didn’t like being jabbed one bit, and was screaming and crying for around 10 minutes afterwards. I also fell to bits, trying to be strong for Saige so she would see it was all ok, but I only managed to talk to her calmly while tears were running down my face. And then Tayen wanted to watch what was going on and getting upset at all the commotion, so it was awful for all of us. I kept thinking about needle related diseases, and praying that all the equipment had been sterilised properly! I called Alan to let him know what was going on, and he came to the clinic when he had finished work for the day. Saige was on the IV drip for close to 2 hours. We got home at 8:30pm, thoroughly exhausted.

Saige hooked up to the IV drip

I-phones are a great distraction!

Friday morning we all got up early to catch the ferry across to the Golfito hospital. Saige seemed to have much less pain already, so I was hopeful that her infection had cleared up. We had decided that I would be fine to travel across with the girls, and that Alan would go into work. So we just made the ferry, and Tayen was happy to stand and watch the tropical blue and yellow fish swimming below the boat before we got going. The trip across took around 20 minutes in the fast ferry (around an hour in the slow ferry). We took a taxi to the hospital, and when we got there I once again had the problem of translating what I needed to do. Saige’s sample from the day before has been kept in the fridge overnight, and I now had it on ice. I also had her sample from that morning, and I had to find the lab to get the samples analysed. I first went to the emergency department as I though someone there might speak English, but they didn’t. As I had the samples and the accompanying forms, they directed me to the pathology lab. Once there, I was directed to the pharmacia to have the sample forms stamped. I then headed back to the pathology lab to put the samples in. I managed to convey that there were two samples, one taken the day before, (before Saige had taken antibiotics), and then one sample taken this morning. I got the general idea that the man at the lab was saying that they couldn’t test the sample taken yesterday. Fortunately there was a man who spoke English passing by that heard that I was having trouble communicating. He stopped and offered to be our translator. Apparently they could only test samples that had been taken within the hour of receiving them. I tried to explain that the samples had been refrigerated, and that the doctor in Jimenez said that it would be fine, but they still refused. The English speaking man told me that he was going to get a doctor who spoke English to help us out. When the doctor arrived, he thankfully told the lab staff that as the samples had been kept cold, they would be fine to test. The doctor asked me to stay and wait for around 20 minuted while the samples were tested to see if Saige needed any more antibiotics. I was so relieved that everything had been sorted, and that we had found a lovely doctor to help us out! The tests showed that Saige still had a urinary infection, so would still need some oral antibiotics. So it was back onto the ferry (the slow one this time; we all had a snooze!) and back to the clinic in Pto. Jimenez to let the doctors know the results of the tests, and to pick up some oral antibiotics. Hopefully that is the last we’ll see of the medical clinic for a while!

And to end the week, some good news! Tristan is going away on holidays for a while, so he has let us borrow his internet key – we finally have internet at home, although temporarily! Tristan also came over to take us out bug hunting, but after the week we’ve had, neither Alan or I have felt up to bug hunting at all this week.

On the weekend, Alan and I move our animal collection into the guest house, as it is much cooler in there during the day and our house has been getting really hot. When I look after the animals each day, I will just take the girls down to the guest house with me.

Alan moving all the dangerous spiders!

Our animal collection in the guest house

I make some play dough with Tayen and Saige on Sunday to give them something else to play with. I couldn't quite remember the recipe, but we worked it out eventually! With the high humidity here it gets very sloppy by the end of the day, and we constantly need to add more flour to it. The girls are very excited to have a new toy!