After the rain....

Finally it has stopped pouring... and the place is becoming sunny again.... Hasn't rained for two whole days.......That brings with it a lot of patients... a lot of them... But it is a relief not to have to wade through dirty water anymore.... Every house had carpets and rugs hung out in the sun today...

Couple of kids enjoying the sun after maybe... two weeks....

We have a school here in the hospital campus and it had to shut down for a while because of the rain..

Today was a busy day... But as I was not on call, I accompanied li'l Christine on a walk... And when she saw this lovely tractor she had to drive it ... This by the way is the vehicle that takes food and other relief material to the villages along with the disaster management team.....

It's amazing how the flora recovers from an insult so drastic... and that too so fast... It's just stopped raining and the grass is already growing above my ankles... and there are wild lilies all over the place... yellow and pink ones.... The whole place looks fresh and beautiful..

Wild pink lilies along the pathway... These are lovely flowers that greet me in the morning the next day after a rain.. if the sun is up... They line the whole pathway and make it look beautiful, together with the yellow ones...

All over the place new flowers are blooming and they look real fresh.... It is hard to imagine that just two days back all these plants were all under water....

It is green everywhere you look.. Put this snap in just to reproduce the wet and green feel......

And Dr. Shishir's flowerbed is full of blooms again... though still bearing signs of having been molested by the rain... ;-)

Even the sky looked so clear and bright today....

Not a single dark cloud in the sky...

The moon seemed to be happy to be up earlier than usual today... it looked quite big and I was lucky to get this really zoomed in shot....

The same day, the disaster management team had gone to Sigauli, a village about 20 miles from Raxaul. A lot of folks from all over India have come to Raxaul, as volunteers. I met a couple of dental interns... and this is what they had to say....

Jerry and Ashwin aka 'Zach' posing in front of the relief vehicle. Thanks Zach for letting me take your pictures and put them online.

A village built on higher ground converted into an island by the flood......
Found it difficult to believe that these pictures were taken the same day as the ones I did...

With their farmland inundated by the rain... people are resorting to fishing to feed themselves...
As soon as the water rises there are fish everywhere.... at least in the campus... from one ward it was rumored that they caught about a kilo of fish... ;-)




A house wrecked by the rain....
Looks like it is still inhabited...

Snakes are in plenty here and they take the lives of many people as it takes more time to travel through the flood water.... This one here is not poisonous though....










The road ended there and the rest of the trip was on a boat....




















Another partially destroyed house..... And i was worried about getting my carpets wet.....













Part of the relief team......












Part of the village under water with the huts barely spared.....








People would just rush toward the boat as it arrived, for the food packets.... They had a tough time convincing the people that there were enough packets for everyone....






That's how deep it gets at some places.....

The guy was actually their boatman... who was so drunk that he jumped off the boat.. ;-)




It is really difficult to believe that the water is so deep just about a half hour away from the hospital.... And this probably is just the beginning... the real killers are probably going to be the diseases that would spread like wildfire because of such an environment.... The medical team that went to the villages saw a lot of bizarre cases today... so we might be in for something major soon.....

Rains in Raxaul

I would be doing great injustice if I do not write something about this issue..... Thats probably the least I could do....

Thought I would start with a good picture.... the whole place was flooded so bad a week back we had water reaching halfway up our knees almost everywhere in the campus.... including wards and residences...
This beetle found a safe place to rest... on top of a floating leaf.. not for long though... That's the plight of people right now in the surrounding villages..


I didn't actually walk around with my camera in the rain.... guess i should have... but i have quite a few pictures on my phone camera... and that is where most of the ones you see here are from... Again I don't have pictures of the real flood situation... I took these today, as a matter of fact, a day after the rains have stopped pouring and the water is receding....


I took this snap after a two minute walk from the hospital... The water had already receded quite a bit.... The two blokes may look like they are having a lot of fun.... but truth is people have to wade through water reaching up till their chests to go about their daily activities.....


The floods have taken their toll on the sick too.... Last month we probably had the highest number of deaths and complications in the ObGyn department since a long time.... People have to brave more than just water to bring the patients to the hospital... Snakes and all kinds of other insects are out scurrying for higher ground... and since most of the water is muddy... you wont even know what bit you...




A bridge I came across when I went for a walk this evening... A wise man's... a rich man's rather attempt at keeping his house accessible to civilization... just minutes away from the campus... In the villages around the hospital.. people have lost their homes..... not much of a house anyway... wooden structures washed away by the rain...Weird stories of bodies floating around in the water are doing their rounds....


About ten minutes walk away from the hospital is a leper colony..... it is surrounded by water that at some places reaches your neck I am told.... And people have died by merely slipping and falling into the water... There is a river near the colony which is overflowing...


A demolished house I came across this evening...


It rained non-stop for almost ten days about a week back... and we had floods.... then it stopped raining and it was hot and humid for maybe three days.... and it started raining again... This time the rivers were already brimming and this downpour probably caused the rivers to overflow.... my theory... It stopped raining a day back and the water which usually recedes hours after the rain stops is still pooling outside my residence...


That's as far as I could go walking today... The brick pathway, my favorite route for my morning walk... just ends abruptly as you can see because of the water flooding it... people are seen wading through the water... I saw leeches in the water on my way back to the hospital.... And Rimi tells me that if these leeches stick to your skin, they don't let go till you cut the skin around the suckers..... I don't want to prove her right or wrong...


The worst thing is working when there is water everywhere... The hospital has provided rubber boots for all the staff... But still it grosses me out to see blood clots on the water in the labor room... Or worse.. the other day I was on my way to attend an emergency call and the security guy asked me to take a different route... looking ahead I found the whole pool of water turning red from the blood soaked gowns and pads of the labor room..... :-0
David Darg from Operation Blessing was here the other day. And he did an awesome job making this video and putting it on you tube... Good work Dave... It's a pity I couldn't meet with you while you were here...






It has stopped raining for the past two days and just when we thought it was all over... dark clouds hover over the countryside...





Looks like we are in for another bout of heavy rainfall......





Okay..... Will make another post soon.... if I or worse, my laptop, is not washed away.. Cheers!

The Hospital

I realized I have been posting stuff about my work without posting anything about the hospital I work in... Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the hospital as such... That's when this brilliant idea occured to me...




The man who started it all... in 1930
Dr. Duncan


I remember the first thing that struck me about the hospital was that it was all dark and dingy and red...... It is an old building mostly made of bricks.... See for yourself...





The patients' families take up any space that is in the immediate vicinity of the hospital... they cook, eat and sleep there till the patient is well enough to go home...






This the outpatients department... Obs and Gyn is the major bread earner of the hospital... On an average we see about 200 patients a day between two doctors...





Next in line is the Pediatrics department... You are looking at a part of the nursery.. and Rimi handles all the department by herself... The nursery has only a couple of nurses to look after so many sick babies..





I don't see much of this as I work in Obs and G.. but this is the most happening place in the hospital.. other than the labor room of course... Happening in every way... People dying, lives getting saved miraculously.. and doctors getting roughed up... the latter being rare though, thankfully..





And we have an Intensive care unit where all the sick patients end up... may it be internal medicine, surgery or even OBGYN patients..
Oh yeah... and it's air conditioned..





Check out what we've got....





Blood... the red stuff filling your veins... life saver...


Indeed it has saved few lives here as people would rather let the patient die than donate blood.... A big crowd brings a woman after delivery with heavy bleeding.. and they stand together and make a loud noise.. but the moment they hear "donate blood" ... they disperse...
Trust me on this one... it works better than tear gas shells and water cannons...





There now.. you are looking at the future of Duncan.. a multi million rupee project underway.. the new Duncan will be ready by January 2008, hopefully....





And finally.... Jennifer, medical student from Missouri.. from whose album I stole all the pictures.... ;-) TY Jenny..

Singing at Duncan

We had this singing thing in the church some time in June... or was it July? Well we all took a break and were into it with all our might..... Will always have happy memories of the program.. but the practice sessions were even more fun.... it lasted for about a week involving rehearsals almost every other day. And we kept changing songs every day unable to decide on one... boy was it fun!! Here are some pictures....


Koza all set to give his solo number....


The program basically had people from different departments singing solo and in groups... And of course we had something to eat..





The Duncan Boy band in action


I remember I was on call that day... and managed to rush in there from labor room as they were announcing for the doctors' team to take the stage....





Boy band zoomed in...


Couple of the guys from the above picture left Duncan within weeks after the program.... Everybody has to move... Nothing lasts forever..





Ashish rendering his "Light the fire again" solo....... This guy's stuck here for another year... just like I am.. ;-)


But it was a great night where everybody could showcase his talents... Different families among the staff also had special numbers and it was really cool.... But it was successful mainly because of the efforts of one man.... A multi talented manager from Nagaland... Viketho.....





There he is on the drums.....





I meant the guitar.....





Nay... he just sings.....


All in all it was a fun evening.....

Duncan Hospital, Raxaul Part 2

A newborn with hair long enough to make me jealous... ;-)



Another newborn I delivered by a C- Section.. it was a baby with hydrocephalus and he weighed 6.4 kilos..... Had to refer him to a higher center for further management. Don't know what happened to him...



Look at him stare at me.......



His mother actually fed him biscuits soaked in buffalo milk within days of his birth because she thought he was big enough to eat..... and eat he did... she told me proudly the next day during rounds....





Enter Sandman
Twins born in the labor room... twin pregnancies are quite common here.... These two fellas reminded me of the enter sandman video by Metallica..





Looked much better this way....














Something to gross you out finally.... Some maggots from a child's infected scalp... Yummy huh? Wait till you see the video...