An average day in India

It's hard to believe that my trip is over half over, and in one month I'll be landing back home in the United States again. It's been an amazing trip so far, and I suspect that the next month will be even better. Here in India we've gotten into a routine, and as today was a fairly typical day for me in that it sort of combined a lot of the different things we've done in one day, I thought I'd share what an average day looks like for me. Today started at 7am--at least for the rest of the cohort, since I hit my snooze button several times before getting up. Fortunately, it doesn't take long to shower, since there isn't any hot water (which feels great after exercising, but not so great when you first get up). I'm also not a huge fan of Indian breakfast, so instead of choking down the grilled vegetable sandwich, I asked for toast instead.

The hour and a half drive to Virgo and on to DMH went smoothly, and when we got to the hospital, we went to the clinic of one of the pediatricians, Dr. Gapchup. We've met her before, as she is one of the key doctors in leading the slum projects. At about 11am, we left and went with Dr. Joshi to scrub in and watch a surgery--a C-section. It truly is an amazing operation to watch, since you get to watch a baby take it's first breath in the world. We left from there to go on rounds with Dr. Joshi, which we've begun to do regularly, since going on rounds once means so much less without seeing how the different patients progress and get better. I suppose that's one of the more rewarding things about being a doctor--seeing your patients get better (and one of the things that's easy to miss out on in being an intern).

After lunch in the canteen, we went to go present our small project to another doctor in pediatrics. She had asked us to take a look at their data for a paper they want to publish and look at the statistics. Then we went to the PICU to start our own project--analyzing the profiles of the different patients in the PICU, NICU, and oncology wards. For that, we'll be taking data about the patient's condition as well as their socioeconomic background. Thus, we started surveying parents about their income, lifestyle, and how they plan on paying for treatment (all of which are questions that would never be asked in the United States, but aren't an issue here in India).

Our evening was pretty relaxed--as was usual. We went to the gym for a little while to get some exercise, and then went out to dinner afterwards. After dinner we got into our nightly ritual--checking Facebook, email, and the plethora of other computer-based activities. All in all, it was a pretty average day, but we got to see some cool things as well. I guess that's India for you!