What gives

Every once in a while you want to carry on through the corridor ,stroddle the two steps onto the bridge but stop just ten yards before the cafeteria into a heavy door on the wall which reads ‘Quiet room’.In the action filled acute medicine setting it helps to spend a portion of your lunch break beyond that wooden door.It is a chapel of sorts,a room to be exact.Carpetted but with very sparse furniture.A lectern with a bible,a side table which holds church addresses,brochures for church activities,small booklets on various subjects like bereivement,etc. As you scour the place what really strikes you is the board .It has flaps of tiny hand-written prayer requests,cards ..people who have just poured their hearts out to ‘you will not believe ,who?’.It is letters to Jesus. One of them reads , ‘Dear Lord Jesus,please be with my eighty year old mother who is having a hip replacement.She has never been to a hospital before.Please look after her and help her to heal.’Sam Anot...

We hitch-hiked the himalayan route we had often driven through . From Mangan, we had to fend for ourselves through the steep mountain tracks ,beautiful wisps of water-fall,reflecting the rainbow . We  mercilessly hacked our way past civilisation,innocent smiling faces,army settlements,labourers with loads. We walked with the river companionably beyond our second breath. The wooden cottages in Lachung beamed with spots of snowed roof and carpets of vibrant primulas . Sweet slumber ,with rice and chunk of meat with lard completed our day. It had been well-earned.

The heat seems like it is here to stay.One can hardly put any food in the mouth and yet the scales are unforgiving, not a dip to the right or left.A colleague tells me it is going to rain on Monday.We just went through a water crisis of sorts for a few days but we are back on our feet, on track ,surprisingly enjoying the unmeritted grace of God in big and small things. Patients?what about patients.As usual the hospital is as unpredictable as it gets.Somedays are busy to the hilt and some as quiet as a monastry.Our collections however have been steady by God's grace. The coolers are on every hour of the day at work and those of us who are fortunate enough have air-conditioners to keep us sane.Just sitting in the OPD with cooler at full blast for stretched hours make one feel nauseated so you can imagine what would happen if we had an out-door job. The patients are a study at impractility .One often ends up doing all the math for them so that they can save maximum money. We have ...

I have been dealing with a lot of mallnutrition cases overtly. There are the usual ,obvious cases that glare at you from the paediatric out-patient and then there are others which are there because they have not been eating due to other reasons. We get a lot of cases of starvation.There is a common myth in the villages which says that patients who have enteric fever have to be put off food. So a vicious cycle resumes.Patients are not given food ....and then later their stomach shrinks over time and then they lose their appetite. We had a twenty five year old cachectic lady come in with a history of  fever. We screened her for everything one could think of in a cacechtic person and she came negative except for enteric fever.She had clinical features pointing towards the diagnosis.She had been treated with various antibiotics so we put her on Multi-drug therapy for enteric fever and her fever crashed by the second day.However her blood pressure continued to crash inspite of ade...

When there is no rain ,there is drought, There is no food .Two square meals ..what is it? Life becomes tougher,struggling for that two pots of water. Cycling   at four in the morning To the community well . The water is receding, The doctor talks about clean,sanitized water , We want just water,water to drink,to wash ,to cook when there is food. Will the rains ever come? I can hear the thunder In the distant sky. Are our prayers heard? Yes the rains will come and with it Malaria,acute gastroenteritis and ofcourse , The snakes will be out to enjoy the respite… Lalli has been bitten , Will she survive? The drought,the starvation,dehydration, The fever ,the   snake-bite Or the doctor’s bill.

Shanti Burman (name changed) had been advised hysterectomy by a gynaeclogist in the city for DUB but wanted it done in our hospital.She was an obese lady ,I was a little reluctant but anyways went ahead with it. Needless to say it was a difficult hysterectomy.It felt like working in a well. Halfway through there was a bladder injury but we repaired it and kept a catheter on . I had to go for my annual leave.My junior for some reason removed the catheter.The senior sister ,when she came for rounds found her leaking urine so she immediately catheterised her.I was away for a fortnight so when I reached back she gave me the ominous news that the patient had developed VVF.I was greatly disturbed to hear this.However when I went for my prayer,a peace that passeth all understanding came over me.I continued to carry that peace with me even as we saw Shanti Burman through the dressing for her abdominal wound which was taking it's time healing each time we used to find her pad partially ...