Hospitals and the Indian Bobblehead

Wow so a lot has happened in the past few days.

First, the hospital. Just like everything else in India, the hospital
was different than I expected. I guess in imagining myself being here
and "volunteering" in a hospital, I kind of thought that they would
have me helping out, whether it was something as simple as restocking
supplies or cleaning up after surgeries or doing menial paperwork. My
actual day to day activities in the hospital really involve none of
these things, and if I were to put in one word what I actually do, it
would be "observe". In the morning, I arrive at the hospital around 9,
bu that is on Indian time, so some days it could mean 9, some days
9:30, or today we didn't start until 10. We (myself and two other
volunteers, Jesse and Emmanuel) wait for the doctor to arrive in the
emergency ward on the ground floor of the 5 story hospital. When the
doctor arrives, so do his 8 residents, 3 Indian interns, and 3
personal nurses. We are all shadowing Dr. Devadoss, who is a
nationally known orthopedic surgeon in India, as well as in some other
parts of the world. Since we are at the 74 year old man's own private
hospital, Devadoss Multispecialty Hospital, he obviously has some
seniority and clout around the place. Even when not followed by his
entourage of 15, the man walks with a presence that just demands
respect. Wherever we go in the hospital, people stop him to talk or
put their hands together and bow to
him. It was very intimidatig on my first day, but just like with all
of his patients, Dr. D paused as he entered the Emergency Ward on
Monday to personally greet me and make a joke before beginning on his
long day. Like I said, he begins in the emergency ward and moves
through the entire building on his morning rounds, seeing every
patient in the hospital. While he sees most for only a minute or two,
he clearly tries very hard to establish a good relationship with the
patients and listen to their concerns. Mornig rounds are easily the
most boring part of my day at the hospital because if, by chance, we
are anywhere near the front of the entourage when entering rooms big
enough for no more than 5 or 6 people, Dr. D may choose to pause and
explain in English to us what he is doing or to tell us about the
patient, or he may also continue quickly on with no explanation.
Morning rounds take just over 2 hours, and all I do is try to keep up
with the group and get in close to the doctor on the offchance that he
decides to explain something. I have quickly learned which rooms have
A/C, and often find myself working the hardest to be next to the
doctor in those rooms, enjoying the brief break from the heat.

After morning rounds, Jesse, Emmanuel, and I take a 15 minute break
and go next door to the hospital to this tiny shack with a room to sit
in and juice and soda and food. Over a Fanta or some strange but yummy
Indian mango juice, we observe our surroundings, without much
conversation, and then head back into the hospital to the operation
theatres.

The operation theatres have easily been the most fascinating part of
the days so far. We change into scrubs with a mask and hair cover, and
walk barefoot through the pre-op room. Depending on who is already in
the theatres, we may end up with tiny white plastic clogs, little
sandals, or totally barefoot. There are three operation theatres, all
with a different surgery for the day, and we generally wander between
the three depending on what is most interesting at the moment. When I
first heard "operation theatres", I had imagined an operation room
with a high ceiling and a little glass room above the table to watch
the surgery, kind of like in "House". They are actually just oversized
operation rooms that we wander around and try not to get in the way.
It's really neat because we are able to get really close and sometimes
stand just opposite the surgeon, peering inside the person lying on
the table in front of us. So far, I have seen a total knee
replacement, an operation to tie a woman's fallopian tubes off, a bone
graft on a leg and an arm with hip bone and metal plates and screws, a
historectomy to remove a football-sized tumor that was in a woman's
uterus, a hip excision, and an operation to cut the tendons in a
cerebral palsy child's arm so that they could extend it fully. The
process of seeing a person in pre-op, watching them be put under, cut
open, closed up, and then seeing them the following day in post-op has
been really cool, and makes the human body seem totally amazing and
resilient.

After two or three hours standing and watching surgeries, we head back
home around 1:30 or 2 for lunch and then have a break until 5 when we
have to be back at the hospital. During our time off we usually just
rest and try to survive when the power cut comes at 4 during the
hottest part of the day and our fans go out. When we go back to the
hospital at 5, we are in Dr. D's office where he sees outpatients. For
this hour and a half, he only has two residents, three nurses, and us
volunteers from Projects Abroad. In observing him, I think I have
truly seen the definition of multi-tasking. People bring him things to
sign and his nurses always have a phone call waiting for him which he
will sometimes take while his residents do basic exams of patients and
he reads the x-rays that the patients bring in with them. Amazingly,
it is also during this time that the doctor gives us the most insight
into what he is doing and why, and he really takes the time to explain
things and answer our questions. We leave at about 6:30, when the
doctor usually has about 4 more hours of work for the day. For a 74
year old surgeon who has been working his whole life, Dr. D amazes me
as he works from 9 am to 10 pm, with only a short break in the middle
of the day. I am told that this is very typical of Indian people though.

Afterwards we head back home and have dinner and find something to do
to occupy our time until we go to bed. Monday night, all the
volunteers staying at the house hung out and watched TV. Emmanuel from
Germany and Jess (Jessica) from England are staying in my house, and
Jesse from Canada, Marin from Canada, and Seb from England are next
door at the grandmother's house.

Last night, we all went to this hotel in town and met up with a bunch
of other volunteers in Madurai. We sat at a restaurant on top of the
hotel that overlooked the city and had dinner and drinks for almost 3
hours. I met people from England, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, and
the US. It was really fun to meet some other people who are going
through all the same adjustments to Indian culture as I am, and we had
great converstations about everything from arranged marriage to
cultural dress to volunteer experience. Being from different
countries, it was also fascinating to talk about differences and
similarities between our schools, healthcare systems, government,
media and entertainment, etc. It was also a nice break from being
forced to eat my weight in spicy Indian food, which although I
realized that I've actually gained weight since I got here, I still
like. I've gotten really good at refusing more and making deals with
my host mom so that I promise to eat to pieces of bread for breakfast
in exchange for not having a third helping of rice and curried
potatoes. It's working out nicely and I actually got hungry for the
first time since I've been here today (there was no way my host mother
was going to hear that though).

Other interesting things of note...

- We've seen a lot of babies with cerebral palsy in the hospital. Dr.
D informed us that diseases like cerebral palsy are a huge problem in
India because since people only marry within their castes, it provides
for an in-breeding effect where a lot of genetic diseases continue to
surge because people are marrying and reproducing with others so close
to those with the same diseases and disorders.

- I seem to have made friends with Dr. D's personal nurses who are
three tiny Indian women who look like they could be 15 but are
probably 25ish. They were laughing and pointing at me while the doctor
was taking a call yesterday, and I finally figured out that they were
laughing at my earrings. I asked my host mom about men with pierced
ears and she told me that she'd had to try very hard not to laugh
when she met me because she thought my ears were so funny.

- There are wild cows, dogs, and cats roaming the streets all the time
here. I almost backed into a cow today while waiting on the side of
the road for the bus, trying not to get hit by the passing rickshaws.

Those are all the abstract things I can remember for now, although I
will have to try to write more things down during the day to write
about because there are just so many different, crazy, interesting
things here.

All for now, off to bed!