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

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~ by handsonindia09 on December 15, 2009.