What gives

KT and Helen were here for a day visiting.I was overjoyed to know that they had made a detour from Nagpur to come down to Lakhnadon albeit briefly .They must have been here for three hours at the most but it was a time of immense blessing.As always they poured out themselves for the people they briefly met.They could have but one meal and Rajkumari,our bai insisted she wanted to be the one to host them so I reluctantly agreed. The time went by so easily and I did not even realise how it went by because my comfort level with them is high. Seeing them relate with the class four staffs was immensely encouraging.They specifically asked for Rita Bai ,the lady who keeps the campus clean.She came with her husband and they had stories gallore from the times gone by.We get a glimpse of mission as it should be.Involvement in the lives of people who God places in our plate and to think He will ask us for an account. Often we become so busy with things that have to be done that we have no time...

Lata and Kamla were two strong ladies I came to know in my short span of ministry in Lakhnadon . Lata had been an obstetrician here for a little less than a decade.She and her husband left the ministry for a private practise nearby.She had a strong tie with the hospital.She came from a hindu background so called the hospital her home.When I was first asked to join the ministry here in Lakhnadon she was one of the person here to fill in during the transition.When I came to Lakhnadon,the ladies around fondly remembered her and kept asking after her. Lata reiterated my belief that ladies are made of a stern stuff.She was a strong person and a brave girl to boot.While she gasped for breath within the BIPAP mask one youngster breezily entered the ICU and asked me,'Are you her sister?'I said 'Yes' and Lata smiled through her struggling gasps. Kamla was a bright nurse who was full of life.She was a friend in many ways.Everytime I saw her she had her brilliant smile and I fo...

I requested Max our junior doctor to help the children of our class four staffs with their school work post-duty hours and he was only too happy to oblige so all the little boys who live in the nearby villages come to him.Savitri Bai was not around when we started doing this so when I caught up with her I told her that if her son needed help with schoolwork doctor Max was open to helping him. She immediately asked what about my daughters?They were in classes nine and eight and apparently has problems with maths and english.So I told her to send them over to me. The older kid came with her maths text with a homework given by her teacher to solve three questions. I had not anticipated that maths would be taught in hindi.Multiple xs and ys stared at me and I had no idea about what they wanted us to do with it.I asked for help from one of the nurses who had sat through a hindi medium and she was as blank.i wondered what the children would do with the xs and ys in their life later. The...

I got talking to a taxi driver ,a sikh gentleman who has ferried around a lot of my kiths and kins in the past and so seems to have a vague sketch of the family line ,that's what I got to know this time.Two days of ferrying to Gurgaon was done in silence ,I had exams to attend to and so must have looked forbidding.On my final journey to the station he suddenly got chatty.He seems to have gathered I am a doctor so he invited me to start a hospital and a school in his village,apparently in Haryana and Punjab border with the nearest good school or a hospital being some sixty kilometres away.He said the folks in his village could not send girls to school because it was very far away. He had a lot to say about Punjab and his sikh religion.According to him he is a pure sikh so avoids meat and alcohol.Most of his free time is spent helping out in a langer preparing food for the poor of Delhi.He talked about the festivals they celebrate ,how they open stalls all over the gurdwara. In th...

Last but one week has been crazy to say the least.Everything seems to be moving at frantic pace and I am frankly out of breath and feel like I am walking on cloud.I was in Delhi for my BLS and ACLS accredition by the American Heart Association.I had a first day which was a challenge and second and third day went in a haze with a terrible migraine but things we do instinctively by now does not need too much of effort and by God's grace I cleared it so now I am officially allowed to resusciate patients.In the meantime visited Lata in Stephens who was on a CPAP struggling for breath and barely mantaining saturation.One thing that struck me was she was a brave girl ,I guess having three children below the age of fifteen makes you brave ,every effort was a struggle and yet she was at it looking after herself,acknowledging our prayers ,responding to our scarce queries.Apart from praying with her all I could manage was to express my appreciation of how brave she was and how people were p...

You can get surprised by life .Just the other day I had this racking headache.Mosquitoes are having a field-day biting us every now and then.In between looking after guests,running the hospital ,clinics I hastily gave blood in the lab for infective work up.The reports surprised me suddenly with a hemoglobin of 9.6.The lab person checked it twice because he knows  I mantain a steady 12gm always.I pushed aside the result from my mind because I was actually resuscitating a patient then.All work done,at midnight, I remembered I better go and check my reports.It showed significantly low mcv and mch.It was definately iron defficiency anaemia but it was through a relatively short period of two months.To my knowledge I had not bled anywhere,I could have been malnutrioned or have a hookworm.I am keeping the safer options and treading carefully.I have started taking anti-helmenthics and iron syrup ,if it persists I  will happily go for scopies. But I am ready for anything.