What gives

Just when I think I have seen it all and done most things in Lakhnadon,Alok Singh is wheeled into the OPD.He has a history of injury to the heel which was treated in Seoni .Since two days he has severe spasm in the neck and is unable to swallow anything. I last saw a case of tetanus ten years back in Jharkhand .Here was Alok who went into a severe bulbar spasm as soon as I put my spatula into his mouth. I had to go through the tedious experience of explaining the natural history to the  bystanders who were already very difficult to communicate to. Just how do you treat diseases like tetanus in the current scenario?We have long stopped stocking Tetanus anti-globulins.Brought to mind Dr keith Sander whom I had the privellage to meet for lunch during my time in England.he had done some work on tetanus during his stint in Ruxual ,and I am talking about the founders of the organisation ! I remembered our escapades in Oddanchattram where day after day Dr KV during his rounds used to...

Yesterday we attended the ‘Yeshua ‘concert in Jabalpur. It  was a group of young boys leading  the   worship with songs which have blessed so many in the  present generation. There was a lot of   technical snag I believe (Joseph ,our muscian dentist noticed  but  so did he notice the much needed   dental work the lead singer needed,so I don’t know?) because  the unpredictable rains ensured a  change of venue at the last moment. I, for one ,did not notice anything because I was caught up in the worship. The concert started with a salute for the king-all of us stiff people were asked to stand in absolute attention with our salute for the King of kings. There were banters,there was worship,there was an altar call.My heart’s cry was for the youngsters on the stage to be broken individually for God to a greater extent and to be poured out even more for Lord Jesus’ glory. At the end of the worship all of us were on our knees ,...

We are called to be the sons and daughters of the living God. We are called to purity.'be thou Holy even as I am holy.' We are called to grow and be lifted up in Christ. We are called to be taken up in Glory with our savior.

Ashish Ram literally hobbled into our casualty supported by his relatives.His complaints were severe palpitation and giddiness.His heart was racing as was visible from his carotids and his pulse was hardly there.We fitted a cardiac monitor stat and there was a ventricular tachycardia on the run.This fortyfive odd years man had walked with that VT from God knows where? We traced out an ECG ,got our defibrillator into our casualty and I got my colleague going with the machine even as I got the settings in place.The nurses were quick in getting the consent from the relatives.The man was sedated quickly and shocked.He reverted to normal sinus rythemn by God's grace . The second ECG we traced out showed a nice WPW syndrome,the earlier ECG also had a prolonged QTc which had normalised in the second one.The electrolytes which were quickly done through the ABG showed significant hypocalcaemia so we gave him the slow calcium gluconate intravenously with our eyes on the monitor. To m...

Eight o'clock in the morning while we were having our morning prayers,a patient with chest pain came to the casualty.The young nurse during the ward prayer prayed that not I, but Christ would come through to minister to all the patients. The patient was in severe distress with pulses hardly palpable.Max had done the prelimanaries and by the time I reached, the ECG had just chugged out from the machine.the patient had extensive anterior wall myocardial infarction. I started barking orders as usual.The monitor showed a sinus rythemn and the blood pressure was just about holding.We went ahead and thrombolysed the patient. The streptokinase was in ,the analgesics were in and so we expected the patient to settle down,but suddenly he started sweating profusely and went into a ventricular tachycardia,following which he became extremely restless. The man who had so far been relatively controlled gave a blood curdling scream and I thought that was it.I haven't seen too many men wit...

What an amazing season of reaching out to women especially mothers, it has been.We had our women's conference in the last week of August as scheduled.Thirteen ladies sat at the Lord's feet like Mary with our two senior resource persons who have been through it all but carry that 'precious wonder' in their heart which touched our lives in different ways.I find myself so much more calmer and rested and more in touch with myself these days. The vocational training centre has ten women from different walks of life being taught sewing by our very own Mrs Zakir who not only excels in the craft but gives 101% of herself to the task. Since yesterday thirty strong ladies from the village,namely ASHA workers are being trained in the campus in different government modules and will be here for the next three days.This is just the first batch this season and it fills my heart with joy to see these mothers take time off from their busy mothering schedule to attend classes and just...

Prashant was ill when he came ,required intensive care.He recovered albeit slowly but surely.The father realised how ill he was and requested me to do all I could do,his words were ,'Don't worry about money'.Needless to have said that because we never worry about money when we treat a patient. I was away when it was time for Prashant to go home.There was no usual asking for charity here.The father quietly disappeared and appeared one fine day with half the sum.We wrote off the rest.He had arranged for six grands.I wondered how?He showed me the papers.He had leased out his land to another person for a year,sealed,stamped and approved by the local tehsil.No interest ,nothing. Considering how uncertain it was for farmers anyways I thought it was smart. Shitiiz brought in his mother to the out-patient.He went to the local Sahu ,left his mother's silver anklet and got a fifteen hundred rupees for her treatment.He has to pay an added interest of fifteen rupees per month.I...

I had been in a woman's conference for two days and then in Lalitpur to see my good friend Sheba.Coming back to work ,it was ward  rounds with my juniors as usual.In the male ward ,a young boy gave me an unabashed heartfelt smile and told me 'my father is coming today'.I was taken aback wondered if the boy was a little behind in the growth milestones? When I asked Max to update me the history,I realised it was Shyam.How could I possibly not have recognised him. On one of my duty days he was wheeled into the casualty cold and clammy ,unconscious with a heart-rate of thirty beats ,ECG showed a complete heart block and a barely recordable blood pressure. I thought we had a case for pacing but just a dose of atropine saw the heartbeat returning to normal sinus rythem and that gave us some time for some history and basic bloods.His ABG was nothing to write home about. Shyam had followed a truck driver to Mumbai was what the father said.The truck driver had dumped an uncon...