Last Post!!

Hi all,

This will be my last post as I am returning to the states on Saturday morning. My dad was convinced that come this time I would be beyond ready to return, but truly I am not ready to depart. I have met some amazing people and I learned far more than I ever anticipated.

This past Saturday, we journeyed to Mumbai. We saw the Gateway of India, which marked the final exit of the British reign. We also visited the Taj Mahal Palace for high tea and then explored Gandhi's home and Juhu beach. Pictures are below!

This is 'obviously' a candid photo of me sipping on Taj Mahal Palace tea.

This photo is of Gandhi's home, which has since been turned into a museum. The museum featured the original letters that Gandhi had written to Hitler and Franklin Roosevelt. They were a fascinating read. Feel free to private message me and I can forward over the picture I took!

This image if of Juhu beach. This beach was horribly polluted from washed up trash. There is currently an effort called 'Swachh Bharat,' meaning 'clean India' in order to protect areas such as this one and clean the filth from India's streets. I love this country, but most of its streets are covered in trash. America buries their trash, but India doesn't have excess land to do so and they lack policies to deter further littering. 

On Sunday, we toured where Gandhi was imprisoned from 1942-1944, the Aga Khan Palace (shown below). It is the most magnificent building I have ever seen and it is considered one of the greatest marvels of India. The palace sits on 19 acres of land and houses the remains of both Mahatma Gandhi and his wife, Kasturba Gandhi. 

My last week of clinical has been just as exciting! Today I got the chance to visit the orphanage of Sassoon General Hospital, Shreevatsa. I do not know much about orphanages so I did not know quite what to expect. But, I was blown away by its positive atmosphere. Children in India are placed in such homes when a child is produced out of wedlock and the pregnancy is beyond the time frame for legal termination. Despite these circumstances, this organization was clearly devoted to providing excellent child care. The place was incredibly clean, there were many spaces to play, and several amenities were available to the children, including an attached center for education, hydrotherapy, counseling and regular medical assistance. The best part to hear was that usually all children at this facility are adopted (which is about 5000 children per year)!! Children with special needs and those that are HIV+ are often adopted as well :) 

Afterwards we went to Dr. Kotari's home for lunch. He is a pediatrician and one of the program preceptors. His family joined us for dinner last Wednesday, but for the first time EVER he invited students to his home (my crew). We tasted leaves in his garden, played guitar and sang Bohemian Rhapsody after being stuffed to the brim with delicious Indian food. It was fantastic...

Sadly, this will be my last post ladies and gents! I am definitely not ready to depart this wonderful place. The amount of culture here is truly overwhelming such as the differences in person to person interactions (where hugging friends is considered strange, but holding hands is not), the daily dress for a females is always traditional dress (a kameez or a saree), the food is so spicy it is almost unpalatable, every female has a nose piercing and toes rings and shoes are never worn indoors (even in hospitals). The list just goes on. 

 I appreciate everyone who has kept up with my posts and I hope that you have enjoyed reading about my adventures! I certainly have had the most amazing experience and I cannot wait to return to India to reconnect with the folk of Pune. 

Having a blast over here...

Hey friends!

These past two weeks have been fantastic. I have had the chance to see a plethora surgeries including a histerecomy, an inaugural hernia repair, a tubal ligation, a natural birth (with an ipisiotomy), an appendectomy and more!! There were a few moments that gave me the willies, but I have powered through the blood, the bodily fluids and the poor sanitation techniques...and frankly I am mystified! Surgery is awesome, the neonates are breath taking and my head is full of knowledge.

I have also had some time to explore the country:) Two weekends ago, I visited Mahabeshwar's many mountains, the Mapro Garden, strawberry fields, strawbetry winery, and many temples. This past weekend I visited the buddist temples of the Ajanta and the Ellora caves. On Tuesday I bought my first authentic saree for a formal dinner with all of my new doctor friends!

The most challenging portion of this journey so far has by far been the language barrier. Their primary language is Marathi, but educated Indians speak some English. Unfortunately, their English pronunciation is very poor and my hearing is very bad :( The conversations usually consist of mostly of "huh? what?"....and they respond, "do you not speak English?"
I didn't take any English courses at UVM, so perhaps I don't.

It has also been surprising how many people ask for pictures of you! There are rarely tourists in India, especially white tourists ....so whenever I'm in public people stare, ask to take a photo with you and/or take pictures of you.

And to end this post on a great note...the ladies and I went to see Superwoman. We had excellent reclining seats, popcorn and a surprising intermission with the Indian national anthem!

Below is a quick mesh of different photos from the trip thus far...
There are also a few hundred more available on Facebook, under the album "India 2017"

Photo from the Ajanta Caves

Photo from the Taj of Deccan, pronounced abibi-Ka-Maqbata

A statue of Buddha at the Ajanta Caves (there were so many)

Photo of my program clan!!

Photo of my pre-Superwoman giddiness

Photo of my saree pre-dinner party

Street Animals

Here are a few photos of lovely sheep and horses being herded to brighten your day :) 

Week 1 Update

Hey all! 

One week into my trip, I have grown incredibly grateful for the amenities that the US has. I am truly amazed that people are capable of living in these conditions. I often wake up in the morning without electricity, without running water and/or bugs crawling over me. There are stray dogs, pigs and countless people sleeping in the streets. Regardless, my host family has been fantastic in helping us adjust to the cultural differences. Yesterday, Dada took me for a ride on their motorcycle. I think I may have to buy one...Fun Fact: Pune has the most two wheelers compared to all of Asia.

Our program leader, Dr. Dabak has also been great to us. He promised that we would at least see one cesarean section, one terminal, one hysterectomy, one tubal ligation and one live birth. I'm sure some of my readers are a tad uncomfortable with the second, but Dr. Dabak explained that it is important that Indian women are empowered with their right to choose when contraception is so hard to come by. India has 2% of the world's wealth and yet has 20% of the world's population. 33% of this massive population lives on an income of no more than $1.25 a day. Women can simply not afford to feed and cloth 10 children and are rightfully given the choice to terminate. This is a true unique quality to the program as this is not a procedure that even most medical students are allowed to witness. I will spare you the details, but I did get to see one yesterday! Yesterday I also witnessed two tubal ligations and a cesarean section. There was a woman induced into labor last night, so hopefully I will be seeing a live birth this morning!

Dr. Dabak also described the difficulty in the work ethic of Indians. India's government provides free healthcare to everyone, but this requires patients to seek care and/or effort by healthcare professionals. Their three-teir system appears excellent on paper, but is not executed well. Many doctors do not work to their full potential, simply because they don't want to and there is no risk to them not doing so. They may we legally forced to open a clinic in rural Marahastra (The 'state' where Pune is located) work their for a few hours a week and choose to illegally open a clinic in Pune to work instead or they may not work at all. An individual nurse is assigned to 5000 people  (about 1000 families) and that nurse is responsible for performing home visits to monitor health of his/her 5000 people. But, whose to say that this nurse does this? This duty is crucial in family planning and welfare.

Inidian physicians are usually seeing far more patients than those in the US to accomodate the large population. A physician will see about 10-12 patients per hour. This requires impeccable efficiency and if a doctor only works a couple hours per day, not everyone is recieving the 'free' health care. Think about that next time you complain that your doctor was rushing you out the door!

What I found most interesting was Dr. Dabak's discussion on vasectomy procedures. He stated that a well trained doctor can perform a vasectomy in 5 minutes without any need of anesthetic. However, US physicians choose to extend this procedure with unnecessary measures, often including anesthetic and hospital stay, which costs the patient money, the doctor time and is a true waste of resources. In India wasting resources is not an option. There are simply not enough to do so; this truth applies in all areas of living.  For instance in Pune, a more developed city than most, the city only provides running water for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at night and electricity is also luxury.

I have been trying to share pictures, but it does not seem to be working. I'll try to share then separately.

Stay tuned!

Journey to Pune

Hi everyone!! It's so lovely that I get the chance to record and share my experiences. I'm choosing to write this blog as a journal of sorts, so please excuse poor grammar as I probably am too busy to edit every post extensively.

The country is much more poor than I imagined. There is no internet access where I am staying so you may hear from me very infrequently (I'm using data). But I am doing well! My host family has way exceeded my expectations. They are incredibly kind and they have two children, ages about 4 and 2 with another on the way! The home is pretty clean and the monsoons haven't started yet so there aren't too many mosquitos yet (knock on wood).

The journey here was not as bad as I thought it would be either. It was a total of 18 hours in flights,  it I managed!! On the way to Paris, I sat next to another lone traveler, Savannah. I could not ask for a better person to spend a 6 hour flight with. We had so much to talk about; she was also doing a post graduate trek. Her expedition was a camping trip through the Saharah Desert by camel. Perhaps I should do that next...but I have been recently warned that camels like to spit, so that's probably going to be a hard no haha.

On the way to Mumbai (from Paris), I managed to make acquaintances with a 15 year old whom was also traveling to Mumbai. He so nicely woke me up when we were about to board because I otherwise would have slept right through!! (it was 3 am US time)....This flight was a little less welcoming as i was literally the only white person. I got checked out by a few disproving women and got tossed around from seat to seat. Initially when I approached my seat, the woman sitting next to me said she had one request and so I moved to another seat to accommodate her wishes to sit with her husband. As soon as I approached my new seat, another woman told me she had a request and I moved to yet another seat to accomodate her wishes to sit with her son. The family I ended up sitting next to unfortunately did not speak any English.

For my dad's reading pleasure...the plane from Paris to Mumbai smelt so bad that the flight attendants went up and down the aisles with air fresheners after we boarded!!
The ride from Mumbai to Pune took about 4 hours. I  have never seen such reckless driving before. For the Scadutos who went to Sicily this past summer, I imagine it was a lot like that. The driver drove anywhere he wanted to pass people and cut others off left and right. We even were driving the wrong way on a one way road!

Otherwise, everything has been going well and I will be starting work on Monday :) I'll do my best to post again soon.