Jennifer Hicks’ Blog

June 11

June 11, 2007
Day 1 in paediatrics…so a crying baby after a delivery is a
fantastic sound, today though, in the outpatient unit, not such a
fantastic sound. I think the peds ward is the most insane chaotic
mess I’ve seen yet. The doctors’ office is right next to the
immunization room, which means, babies go into the room next door, get
poked and start screaming bloody murder. So all you hear while you’re
trying to see patients is crying and screaming. Both paediatritions
use the same office, and desk for that matter, to assess outpatients.

We started the morning rounds in the ICU this morning. I told you
about a young man whose family had poisoned him. Now there is a young
woman in the ICU, also for poisoning from her family. This seems to
be fairly common and very sad.

I saw a baby die today. He had meningitis and had appeared to be
doing much better this morning. I watched uselessly as Dr. Rimi tried
to revive him this afternoon. They have very high death rates here.
The nurses aren’t trained well enough, the doctors are short staffed,
and they need equipment. They don’t even have a proper incubator or a
ventilator. This particular baby needed a ventilator. Dr. Sunil says
that the hospital has several donors, but they all want to earmark
their donations for projects, something they can assess the outcome of
with graphs and charts and whatnot. He says it’s very hard to get
donors to donate for equipment and facilities, the hospital’s most
dire needs at this point.

I was reading in the ‘Hindustan Times’ paper yesterday. India finally
came out with its own statistics about their HIV statistics and how
they’re “only” (it actually said ONLY) 3 million and something, not
the 5 million and something that came out in the UNAIDS report. I
wonder how much time and energy and funding was poured into this
report. The government is a lot of the problem here. There’s a woman
from Brittain here, Edna; she’s one of the community health project
directors. We had a long conversation about politics last night. It
seems that there is a lot of corruption and little consequence. When
scandals are found out here, it’s not the embarrassment that it is in
the US. India is a huge democracy, but unfortunately, the people are
ill informed and don’t understand their power. Their votes can be
bought fairly easily either with actual money or empty promises.
There’s not a whole lot of accountability here. Things are made to
look good on paper, but are not what they seem. There are seats
reserved in offices for women, but if they are unable to attend, their
husbands go in their stead, so you don’t know if you’re electing a
woman or her husband.

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed for several reasons. Obviously, this is
nothing like anything I’ll see in the US. On top of the sheer
intensity of the cases and the people, not understanding their
language is stressful. It’s exhausting even to talk with the doctors
because of their accents and because they are so soft spoken. I feel
very foreign here and I’m staying in the guest house alone. They tell
me that there are usually other students, but for now I am the only
one, so it’s a bit lonely, especially since there isn’t much to do
outside of work. I’m realizing how much I have to learn too, also
exhausting, but a good thing. I think I’ll leave here with a renewed
focus. There’s so much to learn and review. I’m wishing I had my
text books with me. I’m learning so much about medicine and life.
Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.