Back in the UK after a BA flight (wonderful as ever - although very Indianified with biryani instead of the regular rectangle of meat and steamed vegetables, and Bollywood on the screen!) after what has been the best holiday ever. I am missing so many things about India - the friendliness and sense of humour of the people, the random sights you see everywhere, the food! But hot showers have never felt so delicious, and actually being able to sleep at night in my own bed is pretty awesome too.
I have also come home to a fab suprise - I have got the exact F1 job I wanted for next year! So after all my stressing about how terrible MTAS is, it's come through, at least for me. I start in August, if I pass my finals, and I am so so excited. I cannot wait. xxx
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Waking and baking in Goa
I'm currently in Palolem in southern Goa. I fly to Mumbai tomorrow and I can't believe I ever have to leave this place. I know all the criticisms - that it's touristy, that it's not real India. That's true! But it's still such a fun place, I've had an absolute blast. The people here are just so interesting, there's a very weird mixture of hippies, party animals, and stoneheads. There is so much weed here, it's smoked so openly in the bars and everything. And the pubs and clubs are so mad, hence the fact that I am hungover as hell! As well as this, the beach is gorgeous, all the beach huts and bars don't detract from it. It's a wonderful curved bay, with some islands near the coast, and the whole place is fringed with palm trees. And yesterday we started our evening by watching the sun set from a balcony of one of the bars. I tried to capture just how gorgeous it was with this picture - aren't the colours incredible!
My beach hut is great as well - it's called Dreamcatcher and it's so peaceful. It's run by these great guys who are so cool and as genuine hippies as I have ever met, and one of them played the guitar for us yesterday evening before we went out. He played beautiful acoustic versions of '"Visions of Johanna", "House of the Rising Sun", and, randomly, "Roxanne" which actually worked really well! Everyone in the bar stopped to listen and it was a wonderful moment.
I said I didn't want to go home. He said why didn't I stay. I said I had to go home. And then he said - you don't have to do anything. If you want to stay, stay. What are you going home for? I told him about uni (he seemed quite suprised that I might be a doctor in the summer - I don't think I had been looking or acting very GMC - congruent!) I thought about it. So many of the people here come and never leave. At the moment, I want to do the same more than I would have ever thought possible.
But I'm off to pack my things now. My life doesn't give me the option of the hippy trail at the moment.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Kochi, Kathakali and houseboats
I am currently overlooking the ridiculously busy Mahatma Gandhi Road in Ernakulum, in an internet cafe that could not be more stuffy if it tried! Busy preparing myself for a mammoth train journey to Goa leaving in about 2 hours - overnight, about 14 hours, and the AC coaches were full so it should be "quite humid, madam" according to the people at the train station. Should be an experience! But I have just come from a travel agents where I gave in and bought a flight from Goa to Mumbai to save myself another overnighter. Only about 40 pounds so not exactly breaking the bank!
Fort Cochin was lovely - we arrived in the early morning and watched people fish at the beach, followed by awesome breakfasts and jazz music surrounded by reassuringly wierd modern art at the Kashi Art Cafe. That evening we watched a Kathakali performance - it's a traditional Keralan art form, a mixture of theatre, singing, art, mime, religion, all sorts! Characters are made up with bright colours and fantasticly huge costumes, and tell religous stories. The one we saw was based on the Mahabarata. It involved five princes, all married to the same woman. In a bet, they lost their wife to an evil King and made to serve him. She refuses, and says she will not wash her hair again until it can be washed by the blood of the evil King. One of the brothers, the most powerful, kills the evil King in a dramatic fight and graphically pulls the entrails out and eats some, and brings the blood and washes the hair of his wife. He then feels guilty and confesses to Lord Krishna that he has killed many of the people of the evil King. Lord Krishna forgives him and says that he has fulfilled the role that God wants him to fill. I wonder what the moral of this story is! But the whole thing was actually wonderful to see, with the makeup and costumes and really expressive dancing.
Despite the heat, humidity and incessant horns and traffic of Ernakulam, I am feeling fabulously chilled out from a night spent on a houseboat slowly, peacefully trawling through the backwaters of Kerala. On many "things to do before you die" lists - I can see why. So calm, the light reflecting the banks and trees - coconut, banana and mango mostly - onto the still waters. This is my favourite picture I took in India - I am taken back to the wonderful peaceful backwater life every time I look at it. The local villages at the side of the water with people laying out old-fashioned fishing nets. Watching the sun set and the stars coming out was awesome too, and the food was delicious - coconut curries, spicy vegetables and fresh chapatis were laid out, with loads of fresh fruit, which added up to loads more than we could possibly eat! The most wonderful thing about it was about how it gave me an unparalleled chance to just slow down for fully 24 hours. When I'm travelling - in general I guess - I don't really tend to just stop and watch the world go by and it left me feeling so calm.
Fort Cochin was lovely - we arrived in the early morning and watched people fish at the beach, followed by awesome breakfasts and jazz music surrounded by reassuringly wierd modern art at the Kashi Art Cafe. That evening we watched a Kathakali performance - it's a traditional Keralan art form, a mixture of theatre, singing, art, mime, religion, all sorts! Characters are made up with bright colours and fantasticly huge costumes, and tell religous stories. The one we saw was based on the Mahabarata. It involved five princes, all married to the same woman. In a bet, they lost their wife to an evil King and made to serve him. She refuses, and says she will not wash her hair again until it can be washed by the blood of the evil King. One of the brothers, the most powerful, kills the evil King in a dramatic fight and graphically pulls the entrails out and eats some, and brings the blood and washes the hair of his wife. He then feels guilty and confesses to Lord Krishna that he has killed many of the people of the evil King. Lord Krishna forgives him and says that he has fulfilled the role that God wants him to fill. I wonder what the moral of this story is! But the whole thing was actually wonderful to see, with the makeup and costumes and really expressive dancing.
Despite the heat, humidity and incessant horns and traffic of Ernakulam, I am feeling fabulously chilled out from a night spent on a houseboat slowly, peacefully trawling through the backwaters of Kerala. On many "things to do before you die" lists - I can see why. So calm, the light reflecting the banks and trees - coconut, banana and mango mostly - onto the still waters. This is my favourite picture I took in India - I am taken back to the wonderful peaceful backwater life every time I look at it. The local villages at the side of the water with people laying out old-fashioned fishing nets. Watching the sun set and the stars coming out was awesome too, and the food was delicious - coconut curries, spicy vegetables and fresh chapatis were laid out, with loads of fresh fruit, which added up to loads more than we could possibly eat! The most wonderful thing about it was about how it gave me an unparalleled chance to just slow down for fully 24 hours. When I'm travelling - in general I guess - I don't really tend to just stop and watch the world go by and it left me feeling so calm.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Mysore
Our elective at the rural hospital is now over, and we arrived in Mysore for a week of seeing the different programs dealing with urban poverty and health. We arrived on Saturday, and as there were not really any opportunities for having a night out in the Nilgiris hills, we went to the club at Hotel Santhosh The Prince. Sunday - recovering from the club at Hotel Santhosh the Prince. And then yesterday we went to spend the day at the Holdsworth Memorial Mission Hospital. We had been warned not to expect to much from the hospitals here but actually I was pleasantly suprised - it seemed to be well run, with extremely knowledgable doctors who took us on rounds with them and told us all about the patients - saw many very nasty looking ulcers (from diabetes which is so common here), tuberculous meningitis, assaults, burns, and one thing more common than all - organophospate poisoning (a type of pesticide.) Not something that would have crossed my mind to read up on before coming, but apparently the hospital sees about 3 or 4 a day. The doctor obviously went on about the treatment and the medicine of it. But he spoke at length on the social reasons behind it. They are mostly farmers, apparently, hence the easy access to this rather nasty poison, and they can't keep up with the pace of production nowadays, get into debt, and see no way to survive in the country or the city. "The human face of globalisation." said the consultant, pointing at a limp, ventilated man in the ICU. . His wrists were bound to stop him pulling out the tube if he woke up. But pulling my eyes off him, I appreciated the effort that had gone into the development of this hospital - it's clean, reasonably cheap compared to many other private hospitals (although the government hospitals are the only option for many people), and seemed like they really cared. As you go in you are greeted by the daily bible quote above your head.. Yesterday it was Proverbs 15:3 - "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good."
Today we went to the organisation, RHLP, who work to improve all aspects of the lives of people who work in the slums - education, health, human rights, sanitation, work, gender equality. Quite an eye opener. There are 80 slums in Mysore. 4000 in Banglalore. And in Mumbai - well, just less than half of the 16 million people live in slums. The figures are mind-boggling. I came away humbled by the work that they've done. Mostly by hearing about the homes they have set up for street children. I asked to visit, I hope to go later this week to see for myself and to bring them any supplies that I can afford!
Now back to the Green Hotel - one of the nicest places I've stayed! Not for the luxury - it's fairly basic - but for the eco-friendliness, the food, and the gardens, breathtaking at night when the lights come on and twinkle all around you.
Today we went to the organisation, RHLP, who work to improve all aspects of the lives of people who work in the slums - education, health, human rights, sanitation, work, gender equality. Quite an eye opener. There are 80 slums in Mysore. 4000 in Banglalore. And in Mumbai - well, just less than half of the 16 million people live in slums. The figures are mind-boggling. I came away humbled by the work that they've done. Mostly by hearing about the homes they have set up for street children. I asked to visit, I hope to go later this week to see for myself and to bring them any supplies that I can afford!
Now back to the Green Hotel - one of the nicest places I've stayed! Not for the luxury - it's fairly basic - but for the eco-friendliness, the food, and the gardens, breathtaking at night when the lights come on and twinkle all around you.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Sickness and health and all things in between
One of the biggest differences in the medicine that happens here is the fact that people leave health problems alone a lot longer than they almost always would in the UK. This means people are, as a rule, a lot sicker when they come in than I'm used to. Just today, perhaps 3 hours ago, the doctor we were doing rounds with was called away to see a patient that had just come in, sent from another, not quite so well equipped hospital nearby. He looked reasonably ok - elderly, a little thin and frail, a bit breathless. The nurses had taken one look at his chest X ray that had just been taken at the other hospital and got the doctor. He had a completely collapsed left lung. I mean completely! The X ray was just blank one side! I was astonished. I listened to his chest with my trusted Littman and sure enough, no sounds at all from the left lung. So bossman doc put in a chest drain to let the air out. He was admitted. He had been going around with a collapsed lung for a week.
And another one I'll always remember is the little boy, 6 years old but looked more like 3 or 4. He was really drowsy, not really very responsive at all. He had sickle cell disease, and his spleen was absolutely enormous. As with every patient, I looked at his fingernails, eyelids, and tongue for signs of anaemia. We always are told that you can tell if someone's very anaemic if these are pale. I've only seen them look noticeably pale a handful of times, but his were white. Even his tongue - actually white. When he stook this blanched little organ out at me, I almost jumped! His haemoglobin was 2.9 (supposed to be more like 10 in children). I've never heard of one so low - I actually thought that you wouldn't survive an Hb like that. After a blood transfusion (from one of the members of staff - I discovered quickly that there isn't a working central blood bank in this area. All the things we take for granted!) and a couple of medications, he was right as rain. I was thrilled to see him get better quickly, of course, but despite that I was desperately sad to think that many of the "sicklers" (as they are known) don't live to very old here. As "Haemoglobin" by Placebo ran through my head, I watched him leave the hospital up the lane, little hand in hand with his Dad.
And another one I'll always remember is the little boy, 6 years old but looked more like 3 or 4. He was really drowsy, not really very responsive at all. He had sickle cell disease, and his spleen was absolutely enormous. As with every patient, I looked at his fingernails, eyelids, and tongue for signs of anaemia. We always are told that you can tell if someone's very anaemic if these are pale. I've only seen them look noticeably pale a handful of times, but his were white. Even his tongue - actually white. When he stook this blanched little organ out at me, I almost jumped! His haemoglobin was 2.9 (supposed to be more like 10 in children). I've never heard of one so low - I actually thought that you wouldn't survive an Hb like that. After a blood transfusion (from one of the members of staff - I discovered quickly that there isn't a working central blood bank in this area. All the things we take for granted!) and a couple of medications, he was right as rain. I was thrilled to see him get better quickly, of course, but despite that I was desperately sad to think that many of the "sicklers" (as they are known) don't live to very old here. As "Haemoglobin" by Placebo ran through my head, I watched him leave the hospital up the lane, little hand in hand with his Dad.
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