I can’t believe it! We actually finished this thing. The
last few days have been spent finishing off some sleep studies. 4 people spend
the night in the lab with all the sleep gear attached to them (really hard to
sleep with it all on). In these last ones we were changing acid-base balance of
the blood using a couple of drugs (acetazolamide and bicarbonate). The bicarbonate
was infused midway through the night. In addition, arterial blood gasses were
drawn. Immediately upon waking (6:00 a.m.) the subjects had to do a ventilatory
response test. So, those of us that were done had to be up early to perform
those tests.
The afternoon was spent packing up the lab. We managed to
get everything back in the Pelican cases and ready for the porters to carry
down. We’re actually leaving with less than we came with. We used a bunch of
consumables, donated the consumables that we didn’t use to the hospital in
Kunde (this is where Echo Mike scanned the kids) and managed to leave some
things here (we donated some things to the Pyramid as well). This lightens our
loads and saves us some money! Both important at this time in the trip. It was
quite an afternoon of cleaning, but we got the Pyramid back in shape.
The late afternoon was spent washing up (had been a few days
since my last shower), reading and napping! Some well deserved down time!
Today was also Sam Lucas’ birthday, so a few of the group
went into Lobuche for some beers. As usual I was not feeling the greatest, so I
decided to pass. They came back with some big smiles from 2 beers (gotta love
the altitude) and then we had a nice dinner, followed by a birthday cake that
was excellent (they don’t have an oven here, so they steam the cake!)
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