New Year

Happy New Year!  Hope everyone was able to have a relaxing and enjoyable holiday, and are back into everyday life.  After a much needed visit home for the holidays, Jackie and I returned to Santa Cruz, Bolivia until May 2013. 

Here’s a very basic report we gave to the director of our hospital.  So we fell short of our 200 patient goal, but we spend a few weeks distracted by other things (visits from the head researchers in the US, one week organizing echocardiograms for 35 patients, etc.).  Anyways, we have completed a thorough database in excel, and are looking to get a statistics program to start analyzing what we have.  It’s a bit overwhelming, as we still have to get readings and scores on EKGs and digitalize them, do follow-ups, work on getting more echocardiograms (budget constraints), and the list goes on, but we’ll keep afloat.  Maybe 500 patients total by May?  We shall see…

It’s been a fantastic 4 months.  I have really enjoyed getting the opportunity to come down here, and many thanks for everyone’s support.  Indeed, hard to leave home again, but Jackie and I have a lot more work to do here!