Hands on India 2010

Students will again be travelling to Siliguri in December this year to provide chiropractic care to the local community.  For more information, check out their blog at http://handsonindia10.wordpress.com/.

Warm for the winter…

We received an email this week from Father James containing some wonderful photos of the school children in Seva Kendra receiving the school jumpers Hands on India donated.

“The Teachers, student, Parents and the committee member of the schools express their sincere thanks & gratitude to you Dr. Noel Patterson & the team members of Murdoch University Australia for the kind health treatment and the clothes to save the children from this severe winter.”

These children’s parents are rock breakers and it is only very recently that they have been given the opportunity to go to school.  Hands on India paid for over 200 school jumpers to be purchased for the children to wear during the winter.

Jumpers were donated the the following schools:

Asha Niketan – Mahananda River Bed

Jyoti Niketan – Balason River Bed

Geetanjali Niketan – Chenga River Bed

Gyandeep Niketan – Manza River Bed

It’s all over… and what an experience it was…

Yesterday was our last day of treating in India.  The past two weeks have been the craziest, most hectic and most rewarding time of our lives!

The people of India have truly taken us into their hearts and we thank them for their generosity, smiles and love.

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

Hello everyone! After many failed attempts to post a blog, I’ve woken up super early this morning to share a sample of some of the amazing adventures we’ve had so far.

As the saying goes ‘a picture paints a thousand words’

-James

Man Down!

Hello all, and welcome to the new edition of HOI update, brought to you by Gastro… We’ve had so little time to keep up with blogging so I decided I’d create an opportunity to write some by falling ill and staying home for the day… The things I do for our support teams back home!

At least it appears to be isolated  so that’s a bonus; the last thing we want is to take out the entire boys dorm!  It was bound to happen to someone at some stage, and this will only bring people back down to reality at how easily it can happen here in India.

Enough about me though, there’s lots of exciting stuff going on in the clinics and students and clinicians alike are doing amazing things for the people of Siliguri.  Day 8 is jut finishing up and the teams are just arriving home now. Its likely that the 3 field clinics broke 500 new patients today and Seva Kendra clinic is not far behind.  This along with heaps of return visits (yet to be tabulated) make for an extremely busy day.

For your sake, here is an outline of a typical day:

Get up 6:30, have a cold shower or a warm bucket wash, go eat some porridge, take part in the morning pep talk by Dr Noel and pack our jeeps.  Then its off to 1 of 3 satellite clinics (or stay at the home-base clinic depending on the schedule).  The closest “clinic” is 30min away, the farthest about 1hr.  We cram 8 ppl (6 students, 2 clinicians) plus driver into each jeep so it makes for a cozy ride:).  Not to mention the roads are about as good as a canadian country dirt road in April.  Some of the pot holes are literally feet deep!!! The ride is great for chats though and we’re picking up heaps of great info from our awesome team of clinicians.  We have 9 in total with over 150yrs of collective experience; Lots to be learned!

all of the clinics are set up at or around schools, so there’s always lots of kids around playing cricket, hockey, and other fun games.  1 of the clinics is actually just in a large open gazebo/stage, another is in a large warehouse-like concrete space and the 3rd is crammed into a tiny classroom.  We only have 6 proper treatment tables so most of us are treating on 2 school benches pushed together with a towel/blanket over top. Not great for our own posture, but good for learning how to cope without a fancy table.

When we arrive at the clinics, there are usually 20-30ppl waiting. We get set up quickly and by 9am all clinics are up and running usually.  The masses usually arrive around 9:30-10 and at some stages we’ve had well over 50ppl waiting.  The people are so patient though, and some have waited for more than 5 hrs (they’re usually the ones who are least pushy, and get lost in the shuffle).

Since the end of week 1 we have all essentially been operating on our own and the clinicians themselves are treating more than 50% of the time. This cuts down on time wasted waiting for a clinician and builds our confidence in trusting our own diagnostic skill and instincts. So most students are seeing about 10-15 new patients and 10-15 return patients per day. To put in perspective, it will probably take us 6 weeks to do the same back at murdoch clinic!

Lunch usually arrives around 1pm and we take turns wolfing down rice and veg curry with all the hungry eyes staring at you… Apart from this 10-15 minute break, we go straight through until it gets too dark to see properly.  Normally we get back to Seva kendra around 5:30-6 just, have a 20min de-brief of the day where we can talk about the coolest/crazziest/uplifting/heart-wrenching cases of the day.  Because we’re all moving around from clinic to clinic, this is important to keep each other up to speed on the patients we’ve seen elsewhere.

then out to dinner for some more delicious indian food and some chill-out time.  The worst part of the day is the 2-3hours we’re having to spend on friggin’ paperwork when we get back from dinner.  It is all very necessary though to make sure the student treating.   We’ve seriously cut down on the actual amount of paperwork we’re doing at the clinics themselves, but ultimately it needs to be done well because it’ll likely be someone else treating those patients the next day.

Bedtime comes quickly and it all starts again then next day!  This week we added 3 more mini-clinics to the mix:  We’ve been going to the Sonebreaker’s schools to treat all the children in the morning and then the stonebreaker’s slums in the afternoon to treat the general public.  Also, following the special visit to the orphanage on Sunday, Noel has decided we will go out there to treat in afternoons starting tomorrow.  We are so fortunate to have he opportunity to make a difference (albeit small) in these children’s lives, and the reports so far have been very positive.  James will hopefully upload some pics of the stonebreaker community later tonight.

Its 8:30pm and bedtime for me.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a new day (come-on immune system!) and I can make the most of the last few days here.

Love to hear your comments so please keep them coming.

Thanks for reading.

John

Beautiful people, beautiful smiles…

Every day we are seeing so many people at each of the clinics.  Every patient is a new experience and each one has their own story…

Today, I wanted to talk about Theresa, who is over 70 years old (many of the people here don’t know how old they are).  Theresa has worked all her life as a tea picker in the tea plantations around Siliguri.  Each day, Theresa picks 22kgs of tea leaves and makes 62 rupees, whhich is about $1.50 Australian.  As you can image, Theresa has had a very tough life and is very poor. 

When I treated Theresa today I massaged her back and her neck… and she smiled so widely and was so happy to have someone listen to her story and spend some time with her…..  She is just one of the fantastic people I have treated on this trip so far.  It is a wonderful and humbling experience that I will always treasure.

Leesa Payne

The Meaning of Life

It is 12 am in Siliguri

and I am not the only one awake at this late hour. There are many of us who have been up late perusing over patients we have seen that day, and furiously filling out the tedious yet necessary paperwork and files needed for the next day’s treatments. 

I will not lie and say am not surprised at how many have queued in line for hours at a time, waiting for a consultation. I think we have all underestimated the sheer need of this community which is so clearly lacking in available health practitioners. At times we feel disempowered in our quest to help those around us, those who have at times come from towns far away just to seek help. However, no matter how small an impact we think our treatment may have upon the individual riddled with disease, to them is is an act of kindness, for which they show their humble gratitude tenfold. I think we have all learned 20 years worth of knowledge in this last week- not only in areas of disease and the art of Chiropractic, but also about our fellow humankind, how the same ties which bind our society such as family and love also bind theirs.

This last week has been hard work, for this is most certainly no holiday, and where once we were uncertain in our abilities we are now confident, where before we were in a comfort zone now our eyes are opened.

Everyday around the world human beings are living in conditions one hundred times worse than ourselves. This trip has opened our hearts and minds to giving our strength, time and sincerest empathy to our patients.

We have developed confidence within ourselves and endurance to last the tiring hours- morning til dark. Our dedicated team or clinical supervisors have counseled, tutored, guided and cared for us throughout this long week with many an encouraging word. .

For most of us, we are nearing 100 patient treatments each. This is nearly 2000 treatments total. Everday presents a new challenge, a new set of skils to be learned. I think I will speak for many of our patients when I extend a heartfelt thankyou, thankyou and thankyou again for helping us with all of our fundraising efforts to make this trip run  as smoothly as it has for without the support of friends, family and the community we simply would not be here working our butts off to enrch the lives of so many.

The prospect of sleep becomes overwhelming and So I ask you keep all of us in your thoughts until our next blog effort,

Margaret  xx

Hello from Siliguri!  Apologies for the delay in getting our first blog posted; life has been pretty hectic since we’ve arrived and we’ve been busy getting accustomed to the Indian way of life.

On Sunday morning, After enjoying a very brief stint in Delhi (some more brief than others) we flew North-east to Bagdogra, neighboring Siliguri.  We were met by our wonderful host Father James and his attentive staff who whisked us off to our home for the next 2 weeks –Seva Kendra.

Seva Kendra is a catholic Mission responsible for a large number of humanitarian projects currently operating in and around Siliguri.  In fact, their Stonebreaker’s project innitially caught the eye of Murduch students 4 years ago and ultimately led to the partnership we have today.

Just off the main street of siliguri, Seva Kendra is a peaceful sancturary away from the hustle and bustle of town.  Beautiful gardens surround the main building and the whole compound is kept meticulously clean by the many staff and volunteers.

Upon arrival we were immediately served the most delicious Indian banquet and had a chance to finally relax after 2 days of travel.  Following, we were honoured with a fantastic welcome ceremony including beautiful handmade gifts, traditional songs and introductions to all the staff (pic).  There was a tremendous amount of mutual respect and admiration and the whole thing was very humbling for both the students and clinicians.

The rest of the day was filled with eager preparations for the first day of clinic on monday.  Thankfully last year’s group left a lot of equipment and supplies  for us to use which will help to keep our costs down.  Thanks guys!!

This year we are running 4 clinics including a ‘home-base’ clinic at Seva Kendra.  The other 3 are located at 3 different schools within 40km of siliguri centre.  Next week we are introducing a 5^th clinic to be placed directly at the school for stonebreaker’s children, part of Seva Kendra’s Stonebreakers project.

There’s no denying it:  the learning curve is rediculously steep!  All external clinics had patients waiting on Monday morning and lineups of up to 25-30 people waited patiently as we grew accustomed to the setting and pace of the clinics.  Thanks to our awesome team of Clinicians, this process has been relatively easy, but nonetheless draining!  Probably the hardest job of all is that of the interpreters who we expect to understand our sometimes wordy questions and then rely on to interpret the responses. A hard task but they are very patient and we are quickly learning how to simplify our questioning and directions to undr 10 word sentences.

In all, we attended to over 100 new patients on the first day, of which many were conditions that we would never get exposed to in Australia.  In the coming days we will have students write their own experiences so that you can get an idea of the overal state of health in this area of India.

And if we thought Monday was a bit crazy, Tuesday was off the charts!  Every clinic more than tripled their new patient visits along with an almost 100% return visit rate from Monday’s patients.  The locals are so appreciative of this service as many of them don’t have access to any form of healthcare at all.  They are very kind, patient and have a beautiful easy smile that they are quick to share.  Although communication is sometimes limited – 3 intepreters per clinic means a lots of sign language – and its amazing how much information we can get from body language, posture and touch.

As I write, its bright and early Wednesday morning and we’re all getting ready for an even bigger day today. As word filters out into the communities we expect there to be many more referrals.  Students will be shifted to a new clinic today so that we can all experience the different aspects of each region.

We’ll try to get some pictures up in the next few days to give you a better idea of the environment we’re in.

It’s so close now…..

It’s now only one week before we leave for India and we are all very excited!

We have managed to fundraise over $40 000 for our trip this year.  A massive thank-you to all our sponsors and to all the students and clinicians attending this year who have worked so hard to raise this money.  The money will be put to great use in India and we look forward to sharing our experiences of how this money and our work is making a difference through our blog.  Make sure you check back during our trip (7 Dec – 19 Dec 2009) for daily updates.

The countdown is on…..

It is now only four weeks until we leave for India!  We will be updating the blog daily with stories and photos once we arrive, so make sure you pop by to catch up on how our trip is going.