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Alex lost in India-plus skips, blind leading blind
(okay before you start reading get yourself a cup of tea and a more comfortable chair- I’m afraid it’s a long one!)
Do you want to know what one of the most irritating things in the world is? Writing a whole journal entry and just as you’re sending it Bangalore having one of it’s famous power cuts. At least I was so irritated I forgot I’d been plunged into complete darkness in a room full of men who spend half their time looking at the computer and the other staring at the random white girl!!
Anyway been another hectic week with the surgeons. Got to start suturing Bangalore’s injured, my first being a drunk (thanks Ashwin (junior doc.)) The bloke kept slurring that he couldn’t believe I wasn’t wearing contacts, (get this a lot- not a great abundance of people walking around with light blue eyes) eventually agreed hoping this would make him keep his arm still. Instead he waved them around more saying ‘I knew it, I told you,’ to no-one in particular, with me following him needle in hand. Here they can actually send away patients who are intoxicated. I said if that was the case in England during the weekend we might as well close A and E. It’s been going really well, scrubbed into pretty much every op with some interesting cases. There was this one really sweet girl only 18, who’d swallowed a load of bleach in a suicide attempt. The result being a massive oesophageal stricture which we did a colonic bypass for with a GJ anastomosis for pyloric stenosis. The case took 7 and ½ hours, man did I wish I’d had a bigger breakfast! It was all because she’d failed her exams. I’m not surprised- there’s such a huge amount of pressure on kids here to do well at school. They have like a SATS exam at the end of school and are assigned to their career on this being given a rank of 1-100,000, as in all the kids taking it in the state. Then according to where they come is what they can do. Top ones can apply for vet/doc/engineer, then next lot science/maths/languages and the bottom ones the arts. According to one of the docs, no-one chooses to do art, it’s for the drop out’s. I said I thought this was very sad that such an enormous emphasis was put on academic subjects and such a dim view of arts. Then I found out that the average waiting time for a job after graduation in medicine is about 2 and ½ years. Can you imagine going through 5 and ½ years of med school to then wait that long to get a job. They don’t finish with as much debt as us (living at home and lower fees and living costs) but still pretty de-moralising.
I hope I don’t forget some of the things I’ve realised in Indian. Like not taking for granted so much our education system, freedom of choice in career, the NHS or our general infrastructure. The doc’s said to me I have to go back home and tell everyone to stop comnplaining. I told them no chance, complaining was as much an english tradition as cream teas, wimbledon and queuing!
Also met a really nice girl called Nimmi who works for a london based charity working with ethnic minority volunteers working abroad. A really interesting girl and the charity has a health section to it so we chatted about that and I learnt a lot. She was leaving Bangalore on Sunday so we managed to fit in dinner on Saturday night whilst I was on duty! There’s a festival on at the moment called Dawali which is the festival of lights, which means the whole of Bangalore is singing with the sounds of firecrackers and fireworks 24hrs a day for the last 4 days. I'm not kidding, it sounds like bloody world war 3!! I get the fireworks, but the crackers are just really really loud! Apparently I’m missing the point and that’s the fun of it, hhmm? However managed to fit in a drink at the 13th floor the bar on top of a shopping mall on Saturday with Nimmi. First told that they were fully booked but with a bit of waffy charm (think the guy was drunk) we had front row seats on the balcony watching hundreds of firework displays- awesome! Felt very weird an hour later to be back in the hospital assisting with an appendicectomy!
We continue to have midnight ice cream missions during duty, which on Wednesday turned into an ice cream parlour crawl! Was so hyper on sugar, might as well have been a pub crawl. Talking of alcohol am now in 3rd week of tee-totalness. Was going to have a couple of beers the other night but decided I should save the comedy of me having zero tolerance for alcohol for the week of parties when I get back. Between Will, Billy, Rahul, An, and our house warming looks like I’m making up the lost nights in one week!
Had ward round at 7am this morning! As this is supposed to be a holiday day(!?!) but all good as finished at 10am and went for all you can eat breakfast with docs which included waffles, spanish omelette, salami and spinach croquettes, surfice to say it’s lasted me the day and don’t think I can even manage dinner! Spent the rest of the day reading ‘dharma bums’ and drinking coffee. Then trolled the 2nd hand book stores looking for an incredibly obscure book list Dr Rajan had asked me to find including ‘the acute abdomen in rhyme’! Eventually found some of them with the help of Malcom. A Texas Indian who appeared to float around the book store with his eyes on stalks telling me he dropped 5 tabs of acid and then watched ‘memoirs of a geisha’ and has been in love with Sayari ever since. From the sounds of it he’s never watched a film with out some sort of chemical accompaniment. Apparently everyone should try taking MDMA and watching all three of the lord of the kings films in a row. Or maybe not, surprisingly on the subject of dinner unfortunately I’m either working or busy over the next week! Just when I think I can’t encounter anything more random in Bangalore Malcom pops up. Or Parveen, a cotton clad lunatic with the most splendid affro I’ve ever seen coming up to me whilst waiting for a tuktuk and asking me if I believe in reincarnation. Man I’m gonna miss India!!
Do you want to know what one of the most irritating things in the world is? Writing a whole journal entry and just as you’re sending it Bangalore having one of it’s famous power cuts. At least I was so irritated I forgot I’d been plunged into complete darkness in a room full of men who spend half their time looking at the computer and the other staring at the random white girl!!
Anyway been another hectic week with the surgeons. Got to start suturing Bangalore’s injured, my first being a drunk (thanks Ashwin (junior doc.)) The bloke kept slurring that he couldn’t believe I wasn’t wearing contacts, (get this a lot- not a great abundance of people walking around with light blue eyes) eventually agreed hoping this would make him keep his arm still. Instead he waved them around more saying ‘I knew it, I told you,’ to no-one in particular, with me following him needle in hand. Here they can actually send away patients who are intoxicated. I said if that was the case in England during the weekend we might as well close A and E. It’s been going really well, scrubbed into pretty much every op with some interesting cases. There was this one really sweet girl only 18, who’d swallowed a load of bleach in a suicide attempt. The result being a massive oesophageal stricture which we did a colonic bypass for with a GJ anastomosis for pyloric stenosis. The case took 7 and ½ hours, man did I wish I’d had a bigger breakfast! It was all because she’d failed her exams. I’m not surprised- there’s such a huge amount of pressure on kids here to do well at school. They have like a SATS exam at the end of school and are assigned to their career on this being given a rank of 1-100,000, as in all the kids taking it in the state. Then according to where they come is what they can do. Top ones can apply for vet/doc/engineer, then next lot science/maths/languages and the bottom ones the arts. According to one of the docs, no-one chooses to do art, it’s for the drop out’s. I said I thought this was very sad that such an enormous emphasis was put on academic subjects and such a dim view of arts. Then I found out that the average waiting time for a job after graduation in medicine is about 2 and ½ years. Can you imagine going through 5 and ½ years of med school to then wait that long to get a job. They don’t finish with as much debt as us (living at home and lower fees and living costs) but still pretty de-moralising.
I hope I don’t forget some of the things I’ve realised in Indian. Like not taking for granted so much our education system, freedom of choice in career, the NHS or our general infrastructure. The doc’s said to me I have to go back home and tell everyone to stop comnplaining. I told them no chance, complaining was as much an english tradition as cream teas, wimbledon and queuing!
Also met a really nice girl called Nimmi who works for a london based charity working with ethnic minority volunteers working abroad. A really interesting girl and the charity has a health section to it so we chatted about that and I learnt a lot. She was leaving Bangalore on Sunday so we managed to fit in dinner on Saturday night whilst I was on duty! There’s a festival on at the moment called Dawali which is the festival of lights, which means the whole of Bangalore is singing with the sounds of firecrackers and fireworks 24hrs a day for the last 4 days. I'm not kidding, it sounds like bloody world war 3!! I get the fireworks, but the crackers are just really really loud! Apparently I’m missing the point and that’s the fun of it, hhmm? However managed to fit in a drink at the 13th floor the bar on top of a shopping mall on Saturday with Nimmi. First told that they were fully booked but with a bit of waffy charm (think the guy was drunk) we had front row seats on the balcony watching hundreds of firework displays- awesome! Felt very weird an hour later to be back in the hospital assisting with an appendicectomy!
We continue to have midnight ice cream missions during duty, which on Wednesday turned into an ice cream parlour crawl! Was so hyper on sugar, might as well have been a pub crawl. Talking of alcohol am now in 3rd week of tee-totalness. Was going to have a couple of beers the other night but decided I should save the comedy of me having zero tolerance for alcohol for the week of parties when I get back. Between Will, Billy, Rahul, An, and our house warming looks like I’m making up the lost nights in one week!
Had ward round at 7am this morning! As this is supposed to be a holiday day(!?!) but all good as finished at 10am and went for all you can eat breakfast with docs which included waffles, spanish omelette, salami and spinach croquettes, surfice to say it’s lasted me the day and don’t think I can even manage dinner! Spent the rest of the day reading ‘dharma bums’ and drinking coffee. Then trolled the 2nd hand book stores looking for an incredibly obscure book list Dr Rajan had asked me to find including ‘the acute abdomen in rhyme’! Eventually found some of them with the help of Malcom. A Texas Indian who appeared to float around the book store with his eyes on stalks telling me he dropped 5 tabs of acid and then watched ‘memoirs of a geisha’ and has been in love with Sayari ever since. From the sounds of it he’s never watched a film with out some sort of chemical accompaniment. Apparently everyone should try taking MDMA and watching all three of the lord of the kings films in a row. Or maybe not, surprisingly on the subject of dinner unfortunately I’m either working or busy over the next week! Just when I think I can’t encounter anything more random in Bangalore Malcom pops up. Or Parveen, a cotton clad lunatic with the most splendid affro I’ve ever seen coming up to me whilst waiting for a tuktuk and asking me if I believe in reincarnation. Man I’m gonna miss India!!
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