Tuesday 5 June - A New Island

Today I finally slept in till 5. I had granola with pudding, fresh cantalope, pineapple, kiwis, papaya, and mangos. We arrived at another island, Saiu. This island has an active volcano with houses just at the bottom of it. You and see the steam/plumes rising off the top peak. While I was standing on the deck, one of the peaks did a poof and stream rose out of it. Kind of cool, but I hope it doesn't do anything while we are anchored close. 

The morning started out with doing a CT on the mother of one of the patients. She looked like she was 9 months pregnant and about my size. They told her 3 years ago she has cysts on her ovaries. When we ran the scan there was no fluid levels or vascular. It looked pretty solid so they are thinking it is cancer. They can't do anything for her on the ship but will have a doctor at the hospital in the town look at her. She says she can't afford anything. It is so sad that we can't do anything to help her. 

The rest of the morning we just sat and did nothing. I was fighting to stay awake. The Internet was down and the phone didn't work till noon. Sorry I couldn't make my usual call home. After lunch, I helped HM1 Rosario set up our manual darkroom for a test run. We had Commander Wallace in watching and he the had to try his hand at developing one. Well we tried it 6 times with time intervals of 2 dev 4 fix, 4 dev 8 fix, 3 dev 6 fix, 5 dev 10 fix, 10 dev 10 fix and then we figured out they were shooting it with digital CR cassettes. And they were not letting the exposure go thru to the film. So we dipped an exposed film into the developer in the light and it turned black developed. We then did 4 with film in cardboard holders and 65 kV 3 mas, 65 kV 6 mas, 70 kV 30 mas. We got various images but not really quality. We are going to have to find film cassette holders at a military hospital in the area. 

Our other excitement was about 5:30, one of the people missed jumping from the band aid boat on to the ship so we had a man overboard. From what we got he was a civilian. I will bet tomorrow when I get off the ship everyone will be wearing a life jacket and every rule will be followed 100 percent. Not too much else. I will try and call before I get off the boat. I have to be down in the department at 5:25, so I will be getting up at 4 to pull my hair back. It has been interesting day and I am tired!!!