Scooter Gang

Once more i am blogging from a bus that is definitely too hot to sleep
in. This time, we are travelling from pondicherry to madurai for the
third leg of our mega-weekend. We made a spur of the moment decision
whilst booking our bus tickets not to go back to the hospital, but to
go to a nice hotel complex in madurai instead. Apparently there will
be comfort in abundance, with a swimming pool, bar and other delights.
The other elective students havn't been there yet either so they can
have a look around the temples and things too while alex and i chill
out.

Pondicherry has been such an amazing weekend! I've definitely had the
most fun here. We arrived at about 4 in the morning on saturday, but
had booked a hotel in advance this time so had a decent sleep before
going into town. We did the ‭'heritage walk' that the lonely planet
recommended and had some brunch on the way at a place that actually
had bacon, eggs and english coffee! The rest of the walk was cool
too.. The place is very unlike the rest of india. Its a lot quieter
and cleaner, with a very european feel from its colonial roots.

Then the fun really got going! Bene found a place that rented mopeds,
so 4 of us picked our toasters-on-wheels and went smashing up malls
and robbing grannies. In truth, we probably had a much more crazy time
even than that trying to navigate the streets and trying not to die.
After a while it got pretty easy... You just say 'beech' to passers by
and follow their pointing and babble, and beep your horn at anything
that moves (even at cows that decide to cross main roads every now and
then). And if there's nothing better to do, just beep your horn to
exercise your thumb.

So we went to the beach on saturday night for some night swimming, and
then again this morning to a different beach. This one, rightly named
'paradise beach' was an island that you had to get to by boat. The
waves were pretty punishing and made you do somersaults if they got
you square!

The football and grand prix was a bonus too!

Next stop madurai...

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Pondicherry

This week we have been doing more of the same ward rounds. Mostly icu
with a few odds and ends for good measure. I really enjoy the icu
rounds here.. It is very varied, we get to see lots of snakebites,
leprosy, skin diseases etc.. So its quite interesting. There is a lot
of cardio there too which i also really enjoy.

On thursday evening, john and his family cooked for us at their house.
All 6 of us went, and we had some traditional indian food, sitting on
the floor. The food was great. After dinner, i had brought some
english coffee so i made them some of that to try... They weren't that
keen until they put an enormous spoon of sugar in it! John's father
said during dinner that as we had left our parents and families and
friends behind, they would be our indian family. We were all very
touched by their generosity!

This weekend alex and i went to dindigul to have a chill by the
swimming pool and a meal, then we met up with the other elective
students and took a bus to pondicherry, a french colony just south of
chennai. It is now 2 in the morning and we have just got off the first
bus and have an hour of travelling left. We're all looking forward to
relaxing by the sea! Probs will sleep for a while though!

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Second to last week

...So its been a pretty good start to the week! Alex and I got to see a baby being born on Tuesday which was great. Alex had never seen one before so he loved it! He very nearly got covered in amniotic fluid though, but he moved out of the way quick enough. The doctor who was delivering wasn't so lucky... quite funny really.

Played some more sport yesterday, getting better at badminton now which is nice; and found my rhythm on the table tennis table too. Looking forward to playing some hockey when i get back home though!

This morning I was in theatre again. I was able to scrub in again for an appendectomy and sutured them up afterwards. I've been learning how to suture every now and then, but this is the first one that I've done completely and no-one has had to fiddle with afterwards.... Hopefully!

I am now officially the only elective student (of 6) not to come down with some stomach bug. Alex got a bit ill this morning, and the others all took yesterday off to stay in bed. So hopefully, I've escaped unscathed.

Keralan Sharks

This weekend, we went to the Backwaters in Kerala. After taking a semi-sleeper (no-sleeper) bus to Cochi, we arrived at 0430. So we wandered around trying to find a hotel that might give us a room that we could pile into. In the end, no-one would, so we settled for sleeping in the reception of Hotel Excellency. They didn't mind much, because we promised to have breakfast there when it got to a decent time of morning. We then did the usual tourist thing and saw various bits and bobs, before heading to Allepey to a 'Hotel' owned by a friend of a friend.

This turned out to be a bad move. The 'Hotel' was actually his outhouse, that he was doing up so he could make it into a guest house. The problem being that it had nothing in it, and anything that was in it was covered with dust covers. He then tried to charge us Rs 75 for the beers that he had kindly bought us, even they clearly said on the bottle 'Maximum retail price Rs 50'. He tried to argue for a while but in the end I just said that if he had paid 75 for them when he should have paid 50, that was his problem! To make up for it he drove us to a restaurant for dinner (saying that the transport would be free... we'll see) which was pretty good, even though they only had one item on the menu (though somehow all the locals seemed to be getting different things).

After an alright sleep, on a mattress on the floor (that cost Rs 500 each!), he took us to his house boat. He then offered to buy some more beer for us, but i said i would do all the paying, carrying and consuming thank-you-very-much! His house boat actually turned out to be pretty spectacular. It only had 2 double beds (and we had 6 people) so we had 2 makeshift mattresses again. We later discovered that he had two other boats that had more beds in, but i think he thought we liked sleeping on the floor. 

The scenery from the boat was absolutely spectacular! Palm trees everywhere (we later found out that 'Kera-la' means 'Coconut-land'), Kingfishers, Eagles (see picture), Water Snakes, Prawns as big as a baby (see picture). It really was 'Gods-canvas', as the locals call it! We finished our cruise the next morning, and after a small misunderstanding over the charges (on his part), we were on our way back to Cochi.

On Sunday, we went to a beach nearby - another absolutely breathtaking part of the country! The waves were in full flow, and we spent a good few hours being buffeted by the Arabian Sea. The weather was spectacular until 5 minutes before we needed to go, which was good, because I don't think we could have left otherwise.

We then took a bus back (the clutch broke halfway home), and went to a traditional Indian theatre show. This involved a lot of face paint, dancing and face and hand movements. It was great to watch, tho we didn't follow much of the storyline. Then, after a quick pizza (i mean really quick), we got our sleeper (no-sleeper) bus home, to arrive here at 0400. We spent the rest of the morning in bed, and now i'm off to ICU. Alex and I are taking John out for dinner tonight in Dindigul, and hopefully i can get a suit made then too. Enjoy the new photos.

This week...

This week has mainly been odds and ends. Cardio was a bit rubbish cos
it was all in tamil, so i spent most of my week roaming the other
Wards and operating theatres... I think i told you about monday
already. If not... It was boring.

On tuesday, i joined the orthopaedic team for their surgery list. This
was a good opportunity, cos we don't get much time on orthopaedics in
southampton. I saw a hip replacement, a repair of a broken elbow and
some other less interesting stuff.

On weds, i went to theatre again with the general surgery team. This
was a pretty great day. Alex and i watched a gastrectomy in the
morning, which took forever, but it was a pretty tricky procedure.
Then in the afternoon we were able to scrub again to assist on some
minor cases. We thought it was quite funny how the minor ops make the
film 'Saw' seem like 'Pride and prejudice' and they have one theatre
with two beds in. So one guy came in for a haemorrhoid removal and was
treated to a fountain of blood (literally like you'd find in hyde
park) coming out of half a foot... Tho i think he had other things on
his mind. Anyhoo.. We got scrubbed in and i helped removing a
sebatious cyst the size of a thimble from someones chest, sewing it up
afterwards. And alex helped remove part of someone's foot. (at one
point i heard 'oops sorry' from the other side of the room, but it was
all good... Was quite funny tho)

Today, i went to a rheumatic heart clinic... Basically murmur central.
There were some great slapyouintheface murmurs that said 'look at me,
i'm a murmur', but there were often some quiet ones lurking there too.
So it was a good chance to get used to taking in the bigger picture.

Now im currently on a semi sleeper bus on my way to kerala for the
weekend. Semi sleeper means that the chairs go back and the lights go
off, but the chances of them turning the tamil film off look slim!
Just lucky i've got a loud ipod and good headphones... Good night...

Halfway There....

Apparently we're both half way through our elective and half way through our total time in India. Wow that has gone by fast! It has been such an experience.. and im looking forward to more of the same in the next few weeks. I was saying to alex last night that im really starting to like the place... at the beginning, it was hard to get past the smell, heat, food, dirt, poverty, transport... but once you get over that, its great!

I was really struck at the beginning by noticing that in the first few days i had presumed that living in conditions like this, somehow made the people here less civilised, and its very easy to unwittingly judge them. But it only took a day or so to realise that the way of life here, and the people generally, are so much more genuine and real than most back at home, and this prejudice quickly disappears. If they want to talk to you (and a lot of them do), they will just come up and say 'Hi Sir' and shake your hand (usually followed by all of their friends doing the same). And if they havn't seen white people before, they will point and stare. After a while, you realise just how refreshing this is. If no-one is pointing, no-one is looking... simple!

So.. this week. I started Cardio on monday morning... it was a bit rubbish! Just outpatients again, not even any ward rounds. So it was all in Tamil and the drugs that they give are all the cheap ones (rather than the ones with less side effects that we give back in the UK), so it was hard to get anything useful out of it. So i'm filling the rest of the week up with bits and bobs that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Like a bit of Obs and Gynae, Orthopaedics, more Surgery and stuff like that. It's been pretty interesting, was in theatre this morning, and will be going back in half an hour or so, so its keeping me busy too.

We're planning our next trip too.. we are all going to Kerala on friday evening. so looking forward to that big time!

The Jungle Book

This weekend kinda started on thursday... Our morning ward round consisted of one patient (the doctor had already seen the rest), so we perused theatre for a bit instead. We got to see a caesarian section, and two hysterectomies. In the afternoon, there was nothing useful for us to do, no-one was in theatre, or giving birth... so we went to Dindigul instead. We found a suit shop that does tailored suits for 40 pounds, and had a general chillax in a hotel bar.

Friday, we all went to a water theme park near Madaurai. It was such good fun, they had all sorts of flumes and pools and rides etc, which was so nice in the Indian weather! We also went to madaurai for dinner tool.

Yesterday, we visited a wildlife sanctuary on the borders of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The scenery was amazing, and the wildlife was pretty special too! We saw elephants, monkeys, lizards, and spiders as big as your face. I even got eaten by a leech! We also had our third meal out in a row on the way back home - its been a good week for food!

It was also much the same today, we went trekking again (leaving at 0500!) with our friend John. He took us into one of the local villages, and we walked through the forests following a dry river bed. It was stunning again! He showed us lemon, lime, jackfruit and guava trees. The guava was nice - the lemon not so nice! The bus journey home was pretty crazy too - there were so many people on the bus that people were dangling out of the doors, and the back of the bus was so full of people that we kept gouging holes out of the speed bumps. It seemed to be a fairly typical part of Indian life though cos no-one else seemed to mind much.

We're starting Cardiology tomorrow, which I'm very excited about, its one of my favourites. Hopefully it will be interesting and useful... i guess we'll see...

Theatre and Maggots

We had our first day in theatre today. It was pretty awesome, we got very involved, scrubbing in and assisting etc. I was able to help with a trans-metatarsal amputation (chopping half their foot off), a circumcision, I removed a perianal skin tag, and I did some suturing too.

The amputation was a bit horrible. The lady had a badly infected foot that was swarming with maggots (because of unhygienic living conditions rather than crazy medical techniques). When we were using the saw to cut through the bones, the maggots all started to jump out from between her toes on to the operating table. There must have been about 10-15 of them all squirming around! I think im gunna go back next week!

Surgery and Germans

We started our surgery placement yesterday, and have seen a lot already! I think i've seen more people who have toes missing than people with a full set! Diabetes is such a big problem over here, so many people have it, but no one knows anything about it. So all the problems that you get with diabetes are just left until they're too painful or too swollen.. so when people come in to hospital, the only thing we can do is to chop it off. Though, they're very good at this hospital in trying to educate as much as possible. Hopefully, they are going to let me do an amputation at some point too, so quite excited about that!

Generally though, surgery is good. Outpatients is a bit boring - they have three doctors around a single desk, its pretty much all in Tamil (the local language), and they're so busy that there's hardly any time to explain anything. Its a good experience all the same though, the number of patients they get through in an afternoon is staggering!

We now have some more housemates too. Two more German students arrived on sunday night. Benedict and Colin. They are very nice and we're very glad of some company in the flat. Though Anna, the other German, has a tough deal... all by her self in the middle of the hospital, and she's not allowed to come to our flat at all. We're trying to look after her though.

We are also now planning our next weekend away. We think we will go to a water theme park on friday, and hopefully a national park on saturday, then we're going trekking again with the doctors on sunday. Exciting times!

I've uploaded some more photo's to the slideshow too. Enjoy

kodaikanal

what a weekend! we decided to take full advantage of the tourism here
and have been flooding ourselves with western food and drink.

yesterday, we went for a boat ride on kodai lake. kodai its self is
quite picturesque by indian standards, but there wasn't actually that
much to do or see. in the evening, we had a meal in the nicest hotel
in the town, the carlton. we had an all you can eat buffet, wine,
whisky and chocolate cake... all for about £10! we even got to see an
indian bar fight.. it was quite funny to watch, and like all things in
india, seemed to take so much more time than it needed to! oh, and we
had pizza for lunch too!

today we have done some more touristy stuff. after a long lie in in
our luxurious but budget hotel, and i chicken burger for lunch, we
walked around a market and went for a walk up coakers walk, a path up
the mountain side with great views.

now we're on the bus again about to travel back to the hospital.
indian buses have tv screens and loud stereo's, so we're currently
watching some crazy film about fighting and dancing... i think! alex
just summed it up quite well... 'india is definitely not a boring
place.. at least one of your senses is always over stimulated!' he is
quite right!

yehhh!

just a quick update! just had lunch... pizza and english coffee! wow!

going to kodaikanal

yesterday we went with one of our indian friends john to madaurai to
pick up another elective student from the airport. her name is anna
and she is a german medical student in the same year as us. after
picking her up, we had a tour around town with john and his family,
which was great fun! we went to the ghandi museum, and some famous
temples, mosques and stuff. it Was a great day, though sooo hot! i
think anna just wanted to go to sleep though.

today, the three of us have gone to kodaikanal for the weekend. it is
a hill station in the ghats. hopefully we should be able to relax a
bit when we're there, maybe have something other than curry to eat and
possibly even some wine! we have heard rumours of a swimming pool too
but we dont want to get our hopes up too much!

the other day, we went on this gospel trip. it was a pretty great
evening... we didnt understand any of it as it was all in tamil, but
it was still fun to be there. they wanted us to sing some english
songs for them too, but we ran out of time in the end. i might try to
teach the guys at the hospital some at some point though!

well i think we're nearly at our stop (im writing this on the bus on
my phone so sorry for any predictive txt stuff) so i should probs pay
some attention to getting off with all my stuff! i'll try and upload
some more pics soon too.

Almost finished our ICU placement :(

Today and yesterday was business as usual on the ward rounds etc. We're starting to get the hang of the language barriers etc and our Consultant is very helpful in explaining to us whats going on. Yesterday we saw a woman come in who had had a scorpion bite, and we were able to see the Indian emergency protocol in action. It was an.. interesting experience, Alex said to me afterwards, 'If I get ill - you're putting the cannula in. OK?!'. She has recovered well though and is now a lot better, which just shows the quality of the health care system here in spite of the limits on funds and resources. Still... I'm going to be so much more careful of scorpions now (now with the added threat of cannulation).

Alex and I played cricket yesterday with some of the locals (well... alex played cricket, I was playing hockey with an odd shaped stick - anyone who has seen the photo of me trying to bat on facebook will know what i mean!). We also played some badminton - Alex giving me a thorough wooping, so i think he's quite looking forward to playing me again.

We are going into the surrounding villages today with some of the doctors on a 'Gospel Trip', which sounds like it will be a great experience. Oh, I dont think I've said much about the Hospital in the Community too. They provide health care at a secondary level (medium levels of resources etc) at about half the price of similar hospitals. However, if a patient can't afford treatment, they employ them in the hospital staff, therefore helping the local economy too. They also provide education for the children in the community, with an emphasis on hygiene and health etc, as well as on the Christian faith. Then there are also the community clinics and gospel trips that go into the wider community. So yeh, i pretty much love what they're doing here. You can tell that the people are really grateful for the help that the hospital gives!

We planned a trip to Kodaikanal today for saturday and sunday too, so we're looking forward to that! 

Hope you like the Slideshow

Ward Rounds Start

We've been in Oddanchatram for 3 days now and started our ward work this morning. We have seen lots of crazy things, and had good teaching from the Medical staff.

Yesterday morning, we went trekking in the Pandian Hills with some of the doctors here. It was a really good chance to get to know them, and we have made good friends too! We climbed in the Western Ghats, which end very close to us, so there are some nice small ones that we can do in a morning. After that, we went in search of a water fall, which was absolutely beautiful! The wild life was spectacular too! i have put some of my photos on this post too. I have also now added (or will do shortly) a slide show at the top of the page where i will upload my snaps as i go along.

We have also booked a land rover to take us to some nearby places in a couple of weeks time. hopefully we will be able to go with some other elective students when they get here at the end of this week.

From CFH Oddanchatram

We have made it! Our train arrived in Dindigul this morning at 0600 (we thought it would arrive at 0500 so we were up for an hour and a half before it rolled in!). The hospital looks clean and well equiped (not by british standards) and our accommodation is nice enough too.

I forgot to mention the other day.. we were at the train station applying for our ticket, speaking to a local. We mentioned that we were working in a hospital near Dindigul (8 hours away) and he knew the one instantly, saying his father had been treated there. so it seems like it has a good reputation! he also said he was an engineer for force india and was happy with their finish the other week... pretty cool!

We went on the ward round at 0800 this morning (shock to the system after hardly any sleep), which was surprisingly comforting! The only difference being that we now have a good excuse for not knowing what they're talking about! We saw a man who had some strange skin condition that i have no idea how to pronounce - he was all purple and pink (and brown), which looked extremely odd! Im sure this is just the beginning and there will be a whole host of interesting things still to come!

There are no other white people in the hospital, but all the doctors speak good english, so there are pleanty of people to talk to. There will be some elective students arriving next week from down under and some from germany after that. Im looking forward to having a group of like minded students arround!

We're going back to dindigul tomorrow to try and book our train ticket back to chennai for the flight home. Hopefully 6 weeks in advance should be enough to make sure we have a place and aren't faffing around at the last minute again!