Day 4

Day 4

April 14, 10:46 pm, Vellore
I'm pretty tired tonight, so this may be a little on the short side. I
haven't had a really good night sleep in some time. For some reason I
keep waking up at like 5 am and can't get back to sleep. It's
annoying. Besides that I usually wake up a few times in the night too.
I'm excited though because they brought me an actual blanket to use,
as opposed to just the sheet, and I think I may sleep better with
that. At least that's what I'm hoping.

Breakfast was great again this morning. I'm really enjoying the food.
I need to remember to get some pictures of the food. I can never
remember all the names either, but they eat a lot of fried stuff for
breakfast that is delicious.

After breakfast we went to the hospital and did some pediatrics. It
was out-patient clinic day, so we split up and each went with a
different doctor and saw patiets. It impressed me that although the
details are very different, medicine is fundamentally the same
wherever you go. It is a common language between strangers from
different worlds. I would say that I felt more comfortable- or more at
home- today in the hospital, seeing patients, than I have anywhere
else here. It's kind of a neat thing to experience.

Even though the circumstances here are completely different, much of
it is exactly the same. We saw a number of worried parents bringing in
their kids for regular old viral URIs, or fusiness, or "my child just
hasn't been eating well." it was funny to see that parents here worry
about little things that are nothing, just like they do back home. I
guess we're not really all that different are we?

But then we also saw some more interesting things. A little girl with
a wide open anterior fontanel at 1 year old, which made the doctor
suspect vitamin D defficiency. A boy that was being treated for TB
meningitis. A boy with failure to thrive, frequent loose, fatty
stools, and possibly a cyclic neutropenia. That one is still under
evaluation. I think they are actually going to do an ERCP because
there was some common bile duct dilitation. I guess a main difference
is just that you consider different things higher on your differential
than you would in the States.

The doctors were great. The lady that I was with was very friendly. Of
course, they are pediatricians, so I would expect no less. Haha. But
yeah, she as very nice and explained a lot to me. It was good. The
facilities are basic, but I guess they are sufficient for their needs.
They have computer with electronic records, though much of the
charting is done on paper... sort of like at home.

This afternoon we made it over to the computer lab at the hospital.
The wifi worked pretty well. Later we made a trip out to the train
station to try and get some tickets to Kerala for this weekend. Like
everything else here, it took a lot of effort to get anything done. We
went from person to person, getting a little bit more information from
each one until we finally had an idea of how to reserve train tickets.
Much harder than you would think it should be. But again, that seems
par for the course. In the end, the train was full so we got on a wait
list. Not really clear on the details of how we find out if we get on
or not, or how much advanced notice we get, if any. I guess we still
need to figure that out. Hopefully it works out.

There were some monkeys just hanging around the train station. That
was fun to see. The ride back on the auto was death-defying, as usual.
We actually saw a little boy almost get hit on the way over there. The
auto (rickshaw) was only inches from smacking into him as he darted
out into the street. Though he was spared from the auto, he was not
spared from his mother who gave him a good smack for jumping out into
traffic. Then our driver proceeded to hurl some unintelligible (at
least to us) insults to the mother as we rode past.

We went back down Gandhi again today. This time I was a little more
adventurous. I bought a nice shirt for Rs 290 (about $6) and then got
some mangoes and even enjoyed some fresh coconut juice straight from
the (young) coconut. I used to love that stuff in the Philippines, and
it was just as I rmembered it. I'm waiting for the mangoes to ripen a
bit, but I think they'll be good.

At dinner Aurora tried to order a veggie burger but instead got a
cucumber and tomatoe sandwhich. It was pretty funny. They must not
have any concept of a patty. We tried.

Anyway, we're enjoying ourselves, for the most part. It's great being
here. More fun tomorrow!

day 4 photos