A little of this....a little of that...

***If you don't have the time please at least read the last paragraph starting w/'It was an interesting'...***

Today was our last day at SM and boy was it a day. Post-chai we started off the day doing the second part of rounds w/Dr. Gupta. Urm who I had mentioned earlier was headed home for a few days but we got the REAL scoop on her now. Boy were we duped. Aunty Jenny told us that she in fact has contracted it from her husband (who is a truck driver) but she does not know that her husband gave it to her. Her daughter (the adorable Anjali) also has it and so she too will be starting ART (anti retro-viral therapy) soon. Currently her CD4 count is decent enough for not needing ART and so is the husband's but Urm does need it. She will be coming back w/her two older daughters for them to be also tested. Quite disturbing---so in reality Urm has been DUPED. Then followed one of the most amazing and touching things I have ever experienced in my life. They have a daily devotion session at Michael's Home around 9:30...today however they waited for us and started devotion and prayed for us as it was our last day...everyone-the staff and the clients gathered. We were asked to choose one of the hymns from the book and Farah suggested 'Amazing Grace'. I was choking up-no lies. Aunty Jenny then said a prayer for all four of us. It was just so kind and so real and one of the kindest things ever. Made me feel warm and choked up all at the same time. Post-lunch we spent some time talking to Misha (the med student volunteer) and also learned abt TB as well as Mother-To-Child-HIV-Transmission from Dr. Gupta. Emma got a bonus as she also got to learn what the word 'fetus' means...being the non-medical ppl that she is (sorry we all are). It is just amazing to me how something can be SO common in one country and you hardly hear about it in another. TB, malaria, etc are terms thrown around like we throw around heart attack or stroke over there. That is not to say coronary disease is not an issue here too. That is a booming business in itself. You can't pass a street where you won't see some center or shop advertising a cardiac check-up package...e.g. value package...bonus package...Gold package etc etc etc. We bid farewell to everyone and everyone also bid us a warm farewell and headed off to Lajhpat Nagar to check out the market/shops. It was good but we didn't buy anything---did enjoy some yummy Kwality ice cream though. Our final stop was at Coffee Day which was a great way to end our day and I finally had my slice of chocolate indulgence that I've been craving and missing out on for days now (yesterday Tonic only had ice cream for dessert). Came home to find our AC working!!! YEAH!!!! Keeping our fingers crossed it stays that way...feeling sticky around the clock was just not something we were getting used to. ASIDE: It was an interesting experience interacting w/Dr. Gupta the past few days. He is a very intelligent guy and taught us quite a lot. At the same time however he did not think we were very intelligent people and sort of assumed all four of us were completely ignorant of anything remotely related to medicine. We had told him about each of us but that somehow only helped him establish a mindset that we wouldn't know the most basic of things. I think in my case he assumed that I must be the 'dumb nurse' that docs etc tend to deal with (he didn't even bother to acknowledge it). Clearly ppl here do NOT hold nurses in high esteem. Frankly it is a sad state in this country. I had spoken to a nurse in the St. Stephen's Outreach center as well (the Outreach center in the slums we had visited last week). She told me abt how ppl here give a damn abt nurses here and most people think of them as being sorta 'medical slaves' (I use that term w/some reservations) who have no real knowledge and merely do what they are told. When one really thinks abt it this type of mentality is only harming the system. If doctors learned to collaborate w/nurses the healthcare delivery system would be improve considerably. This could only be done if nurses were to be trained in a manner where nurses would work w/doctors as colleagues and NOT simply having docs serve as their superiors. This also demands providing nurses w/some level of autonomy---if trained properly and w/the needed skills this autonomy could most certainly be granted. While nurses and doctors both receive the deserved respect in the US it is essentially the opposite here---when in fact in a developing nation like India the healthcare needs demand highly trained doctors AND nurses who can work side by side. While the doc is looked upon as God here (literally) the nurse is usually looked down upon or altogether sidelined. Watching the nurses work and do rounds w/the doctors it was apparent that nurses here are either not trained w/the same level of medical knowledge as in the US or they are simply not allowed to utilize this medical knowledge that they received as part of their schooling. I can only hope someday this sad state of affairs will come to an end...

In that picture is Om Prakash (a former addict who is now the gatekeeper at SM) and also in the background u can see Anjali (Urm's daughter)...