Clinic and Health Camps in Patti Village

Namaste!

So it has been a very long time since my last post and I am still trying to get caught up from my past two weeks now in Patti and Dehradun, but here it goes...

The week that I spent in Patti Village was a huge change in scenery of India for me, we stayed at a small camp that had living quarters below a store and the clinic. The accomodations were modest and was a little better than camping. Our beds were pretty hard being a ply-wood board and a slight covering that may have been one blanket thick so I used my extra blanket that they gave me as "extra" padding but it was still a little hard to sleep on. The funny thing was I used my lab coat from clinic as my blanket at night :P !!! Oh I also forgot to mention that we were in the middle of no where! Hence why I couldn't update the blog! We had some very traditional Indian food prepared for us throughout the week and I got sick for about 2 days, but was still able to go to yoga, clinic, and meditation.

As a side note, I have not gone one week in India without getting sick, so I miss home purely on food and "cheat" often by eating peanut butter sandwhiches and anything resembeling noodles when we go out to eat.

OK, OK, back to clinic in Patti:

The first day we arrived we were exhuasted from our trip to Dharamsala and took a nap before going to clinic, we didn't see much that day, or any other day for that matter, health care in the extremely rural areas of India consist of colds, sinus infections, general cuts, and small infections. Dr. Paul who works for CFHI is quite the doctor though and his lifestyle in Patti would be any doctor's dream when they still want to practice and be in Nature, his clinic (run by CFHI) is free and his pay is not what it used to be when he was working for himself and another doctor. They often are running out of supplies and medicine, I wish I had gathered more before coming here, and seeing the frustration in Dr. Paul's face when he told us about this, was heartbreaking. Sometimes people will send him medicine that is expired and he can't use it becuase even though they are in a 3rd world country, there are still standards for medical treatment.

Although the type of patients we saw was a little less rigourous from what we saw in Dehradun with Dr. Gandhi, we still got to see a woman with mastitis of the breast, a girl with typhoid, and a three year old girl with a huge abcess on her inner thigh that Dr. Paul drained while we had NO ELECTRICITY! So Dr. Paul used my headlight as his source of light for that procedure, I felt honored! :) The abcess was gross! It was like a huge pimple and puss kept coming out, we helped by holding the little girl while she cryed and screamed, and the local anesthetic didn't do much, but afterwards she was sleeping like none other, so she must have felt better.

On Tuesday and Thursday we traveled out into the Indian country side by hiking to near by villages to hold health camps where villagers who couldn't walk to Patti could still see a doctor. The first one we went to we sat on someone's porch and an old woman came up to me and patted me on the back, I thought she was awesome, she had some great mannerisms, but she told me in Hindi "You can't understand me!!!" and smiled, what a character! The second one that we went to we sat in someone's house for over 5 hours and saw about four patients so we started a massage train (just the girls) and Dr. Paul told us that the "Tickle train is closed for lunch" which started the beginnning of that afternoon as a funny joke. Dr. Paul's porter (person who carried the medical supplies) had gone out into the jungle and found some mushrooms. Dr. Paul was showing us the mushroom and decided to make it funny by relating the image of a mushroom to a male body part... I don't know if I can even begin to explain that converation, but it was hilarious!

The great thing about clinic in Patti and the surrounding health camps was that Dr. Paul let us listen to everyone's heart and lungs and we got to take everyone's blood pressure, so that was really great clinical experience!!!! Clinic was usually twice a day from about 9am-1pm and from 4pm-6pm except on the days we hiked to the health camps which we would leave for at about 10am and return around 2-4pm. The nice thing about Patti was that there was no honking, and it was very peaceful, and the most restful time I've spent in India.

Namaste