Day Two

Hello all,
Day two of this crazy ride, and I must say that this trip is everything I hoped it would be and more! Awoke this AM to the sounds of many birdsongs since I'm on the lovely CMC campus (Anne and Christina reported their wake-up was honking horns). Met up with the ladies for a yummy <$1 breakfast on campus here, got a tour of the CHAD facility next door, then went into town to register at the hospital.


The CMC hospital campus is very impressive. Its like an urban university campus, with lots of people, motor traffic, all kinds of buildings to get lost in, etc. Everyone is really nice, and willing to help send confused foreigners in the right direction. Honestly, the only real differences I see between this and University Hospital in San Antonio are that this place is designed for lots of open air due to no a/c, and they dry their laundry by hanging it up on the roof. Otherwise, they are very busy, have all the same stuff that a modern US hospital has, plus the nurses are real nice and wear white hats and saris.

After registering, the ladies went across the street to get some native clothing, and I got my SIM card charged up (I think I may have gotten ripped off a bit), then tried to find them, to no avail. Thats OK, though, since I just wandered up and down busy alleys and side streets, where it looks like almost anything and everything is for sale. And cows just wander aimlessly around.

After lunch back at the college canteen, we headed over to the CHAD complex for HIV/TB outpatient clinics. (aside: met up with a student from Tufts who told me about the rumored swimming pool. will report back once have confirmed with my own eyes)
I saw several HIV patients in for continuity visits, all on govt sponsored triple HAART therapy. They are started on this regimen if CD4s drop below 200. My patients all were doing well. One had a son with her that a German med student kept playing with, until we discovered he had scabies, which ended the fun right there.

As we walked back to the computer lab, I took a side detour to check out the supposed giant bat tree, not 30yds from my hostel. And it is true. I thought I was hearing birds squawking, but instead, in this giant tree, were at least 30 very large bats, flapping around and making lots of noise. Pretty cool, provided they are not the vampire kind.

Some interesting things I have seen:

Squeaky shoes: in the US, little kids all have shoes that have little blinky lights that go off when they walk. Here, the shoes/sandals all have squeakers in them, so they sounds like a really loud dog toy every time the kid takes a step. When they get mad and start stomping their feet, the effect is spectacular. They also fit in great with all the horn honking outside. I am now searching for pairs in adult sizes.

Abject poverty: for all the fun entertainment I am getting out of this, I am also seeing true squalor and terrible crushing poverty on a daily basis. People are begging on most streets, little kids, old women with no hands being wheeled around in carts. Driving up and down the roads you see the things that people live in, lean-to's, a tent made of a sheet, on a pile of garbage, next to the fly-infested open sewer. And the garbage is all over, mounds of it, any place that is not walked/driven on regularly in town, is covered in trash.

Saris/women's attire: wow. Indian women, at least those down here in Tamil Nadu, really have great outfits. Their saris are full of incredibly vivid colors and patterns, and they often accessorize this with intricate jewelry, fresh flowers in their hair, and more. For all the poverty, dirt and dust around here, they women, as a rule, stand out. Rich, poor, whatever, they know how to dress.

CMC College Campus: as opposed to the CMC Hospital campus in town. Town is crazy, college campus is absolute serenity, with lots of birds, butterflies, steep mountains all around, big green trees, and neat cool grey stone buildings with dark cool corridors. And all electrical relay boxes are turned into tributes to great scientists (thinking of making a compendium of the electrical panels so far: Neils Bohr, Lois Pasteur, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, etc etc etc).

I was going to talk about the "south indian head wobble" wobble here, but it is so unique and pervasive, and throws us westerners for such a loop, that it probably deserves its own post. If I ever get the video thing worked out, I'll post some footage of it too.

so pics/video may be every other day, based on how often I get to a cybercafe. I will have lots more, and may resort to an online album as well, we shall see.

Some pics from my trip so far

Here are some random picks from my day out this afternoon (still have not slept yet). Lots of crowds, lots of cows, some working and some lazing on the street corner, some ladies selling local attire to Christina and Anne, the three of us in the back of a motorrickshaw, and a pic of the guy in the booth who controls the traffic light in front of the CMC hospital. I have some great video from my drive in this AM, but having trouble getting it loaded. People here honk their horns like other people breathe: without respite, no breaks.

I noticed that a certain part of town always smells like seafood when we drive by. On the Texas gulf coast, thats to be expected, but we are nowhere near the sea here. Then we walked by. Ahhh, this town has a lot of open sewer space.

Still, having fun, eating awesome cheap food. Will post as much and as often as I can.

see you later.

Made it to Vellore!

Hello,
I am now posting from the CMC campus computer lab. I've actually only been in India 9 1/2hrs now, and am way way behind on sleep, but I did make it and so did my bags. Qatar Air rocks, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience with them, and I highly reccomend them. Not able to post pics at present, but am working on it.

I am staying at the Modale International Hostel here on campus. While the city of Vellore is without a doubt much more crowded and crazy than I could possibly have imagined, and the hospital itself is in the middle of it, the med school campus is a ways down the road, and very serene. Dinesh was supposedly staying with me in the hostel, but I have heard that he changed his mind. Oh well. Its cheap, and convenient, so I'm happy. No a/c, but I lived several summers in Texas without it, so no big deal. Fans are my friends. Apparently I'm the only one of my classmates staying on-campus. They are soft. Dependent on a/c. (of course, I know I'll be begging them to let me cool down in their rooms in a week or two).

I ate at the campus canteen this AM, payed r24 for some sort of egg dish and tea. for r38.8=$1, thats a pretty good deal. They apparently have homemade milkshakes. We will see about that, oh yes we will.

I'm signed up for the CHAD rotation to start tomorrow. Thats the community health and development rotation that everony talks about. Looking forward to it.

Will try to get into town this afternoon to get cell phone charged up, maybe find internet cafe and get some pics up. I hope to one day document the insane ride through town that I saw at 8:30AM today. Actually, it began the moment I got into the cab in Chennai, and just escalated from there. Along the way I stopped off for some tea with my cabdriver at a roadside stand. It was a very entertaining ride, with destitute villages sandiwiched between giant mega-factories from Nokia, Hyundai, Motorola, Dell, and more. Naked people relieving themselves on highway medians. Rice paddies being picked by hand, ornate & colorful temples every few miles, beautiful mountains looming in the distance, and the near ever-present smell of something unspecified burning....and then I got to Vellore for real. Seriously. If this is what it's like every day, then they probably need several trauma centers here. It is chaos. A gadgillion bikes, mopeds, rickshaws, cars, trucks, tankers, ox-carts, all going head-on into each other at high speed without the slightest indication that such a thing a a traffic law exists. Add to that cows standing stock still in the middle of the road causing everyone to swerve out of the way at the last second, plus dogs darting in and out of traffic, and pedestrians who seem completely indifferent to the death bearing down on them at high speed, and you have what appears to be the average morning commute around here.

Will give more info, possibly with pic and/or video goodness later tonight (fingers crossed).

This country is already quite entertaining.
Stay tuned for more info than you probably will even bother to read.

Hit the Reset button....

Oh, United Airlines, how you disappointed me so....A two hour delay in San Antonio, and here we are! I just missed my international connection by 15min at Dulles in DC. The next flight? Exactly 24hrs later. 

    

 

So, I got to spend a whole day in DC. Acutally, it could have been a lot worse. Luckily, my lovely girlfriend Felicia lives there, and she was thrilled to see me. And, it just happened to be Cherry Blossom Festival time. I must say, that DC in the spring is really nice. 

Here are some picks, including the sum total of my luggage for 5 weeks in India (and a lot of that is empty space), then the two of us at the Tidal Basin and the pretty flowers. I also managed to get a shot of myself in front of Stephen Colbert's portrait which is hanging in the Smithsonian for 2 whole weeks. What luck!

I'm going to try again tonight..... Let's see what happens. I sure hope my checked backpack makes it. Come on Qatar Air, don't let me down!

(btw, still working on making text and pics agree. just enjoy the journey with me)

No, I haven't packed yet

But I'll get to that tonight. Wohoo! I'm ready to go.

For your viewing pleasure, here are some maps of where I'll be. The second just shows where my route in/out of India will be, via Qatar Airlines, with a layover in Doha, Qatar (indicated by the high-tech arrow).

The first shows my primary location in Vellore (big X next to Chennai), and my planned subsequent travels, namely Chennai -> north to Delhi -> Agra (for the Taj Mahal)-> Delhi -> south to Cochin -> Alleppey (south of Cochin, not pictured) - > south to Trivandrum (at the very bottom) -> north to Mumbai -> home. I think if you click on them they enlarge.

I'm still figuring out how to get my pics to behave in this format, so bear with me.

Wish me luck. I'll post again in a few days with reports of my travels and pic goodness of my new home.

T-minus 40hrs and counting

Hey there everyone,

I guess its high time I kick this thing off. Well, I'm Chris, and I'm fixin' to go to India. Yeehaw! This will be my final rotation of what has been an amazing four years at the UT Health Science Center Medical School in San Antonio, TX (UTHSCSA). I just finished up my ACLS certification training today, so all that is left is this trip. As you can see above, I'm thinking deeply about the future.

To say that I have been looking forward to this would be the understatement of the year. From the moment I was accepted to med school I decided I would do an international rotation, preferably somewhere completely unlike what I am used to. I love to try new things, and a trip to India fits that bill perfectly.

Here's the plan for my trip: I'll be leaving San Antonio in less than 2 days, flying first to Dulles in DC, then to Doha in Qatar, then on to Chennai in India. The wholw thing should take roughly 24hrs, if all goes according to plan. Hopefully, at the Chennai airport, two of my classmates will also be arriving at the same time. We plan to meet up together just outside of customs, and in theory a car will be waiting for me to take us to Vellore, about 2 hrs down the road. (FYI, lots of the names of Indian cities got changed a few years ago. Chennai = Madras, Mumbai = Bombay, etc. etc. I'll try to note both names of any new places I mention.)

Ah, Vellore, in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Home of the Christian Medical College, my new residence for the next 3 weeks. Here I will have the chance to try a variety of as-yet undecided rotations. Two groups from UTHSCSA have already gone this year, and raved about it, so I have a relatively good idea of what to expect. I'll be staying in the International Hostel on campus. It will be hot. But, I live in Texas already, and spent two whole summers here without a/c, so my body will remember. Just sweat a lot, drink lots of water, and when possible, stick your head in a frezzer for a minute or two. I'll be posting a lot on here about my experiences at the CMC, as well as offering an in-depth profile of a tropical disease that I see. Fun!

After my rotation ends, I'll fly up to Delhi to meet up with my ever-lovely girlfriend, Felicia. We're planning to see the Taj Mahal, then travel down to the state of Kerala on the west coast for a week of relaxation, seeing several sights along the way. We have high hopes that we may get to help scrub an elephant in a river. At the end, we'll head up to Mumbai for the last few wacky days, including my B-day, then come home. I should get back less than 1-week before graduation. This whole experience is my present to myself for getting this far.

It must be noted that none of this would not be possible without the generous gift of the Paul Brand Scholarship I received, which is primarily responsible for funding my visit to the CMC. I've been given a great opportunity here, and will assuredly get the most out of this.

So, I'll be posting pics, both of my medical experiences and otherwise. I'm still figuring out how to do all that, but I'll fix it up pretty quick-like.

thats all for now....