Trip to India Part 5 (July 28th to August 1st)

The last week of volunteering at Sankara was more interesting than any of the other weeks. I was alone since my sister and all the other volunteers had only signed up for two week programs when I had opted for the three week program. Being alone meant that I could ask for jobs that we, as a group, would normally never ask for. And being alone also meant that I would be allowed to do jobs that they wouldn't give to us as a group. I was allowed to put eye drops in patient's eyes before they entered into surgery. This allowed me a closer experience with the doctors which I was not allowed to have before because I was restricted by the rest of the people in the group. Everyday that week, I also took pictures of patients after surgery and entered their information into the Sankara database. This gave me lots of experience with the patients, who were a handful to deal with. I completely understood why most of the nurses who worked in the non-paying patient ward were so stressed out. The patients were hardly ever cooperative or patient. It made it very difficult to deal with them for long periods of time. I would also serve food everyday and converse with lots of different people. I got to meet a woman named Mangama who brought patients who had eye problems to the hospital on a monthly basis. She has been doing that for close to 7 years after she was treated at Sankara for cataracts. She loved the treatment she received at Sankara, so she brings people from a village and walks close to 10 kilometers a day in order to find people who need help. A picture of her is below. It was an awesome way to end my experience at Sankara and I loved to meet someone like her who is completely selfless. 

Mangama with her award from the TamilNadu Lions club for her efforts

Doctors testing the thickness of the cornea pre-surgery

Me adding eye drops presurgery

Athul and Me

Mr. Mahendran, Me and Appu

Dr. Aaditya and Me 

Trip to India Part 4 (July 26th to July 27th)

Sorry for the delay in part 4 but I just moved into IU and haven't had much time here. Been working on a project for a national conference, but more on that later.

So, on July 26th, I went on my first visit to an eye camp. It was a lot of fun. I met an optometrist named Athul Mohan and even met a doctor whose name I wasn't able to write down. But we left the hospital at 6 am in the morning and traveled for an hour or two to come to a place called Sathyamangalam. This camp was a free camp in that all the patients who came here will be treated for free. In the village, we went to a school where we had reserved a couple rooms in order to run the eye camp for the day. It was a relatively small camp and the doctors were not expecting more than 50 people to show up in the entire day. They told me that there would be close to 1000 patients if I had chosen to go on a week long trip to a state camp. Unfortunately, I did not have the time or the resources to go on such a trip. But I learned a lot of information on this one eye camp. Mr. Mohan showed me how to choose lenses for a patient depending on their power. It was a very interesting day. We left around 1 pm and got back to the hospital around 4 pm. I spent the rest of the day with Mr. Mohan until he decided to check out at around 6 pm.

The next day was also pretty interesting. On Sunday, July 27th, I visited a camp in Gandhipuram, which was much closer and only took about 30 minutes to get to. The camp was different in that it was a camp for just Sankaram patients. So, the hospital divides their patients into three groups; non-paying, Sankaram, and paying. Sankaram patients are people who cannot afford to pay 30,000 rupees for a Lasik eye surgery (like a paying patients) but are able to cover some of the costs for their surgery. They pay around 5000 rupees for their treatment. The camps which are chosen to be Sankaram camps are situated in areas were the people are generally well off. One of my case studies for my project at Sankara visited this very eye camp. His name was Mr. Kuppusamy. He did not tell me his last name. The doctor at the camp recommended that he get a surgery in his right eye, which was affected by a mild case of cataracts. Kuppusamy then learned that he qualified to be a Sankaram patient. By paying 5000 rupees he was eligible to stay in a better room and get one-on-one treatment by the finest doctors that Sankara has to offer. If Mr. Kuppusamy had walked directly into the hospital, he would have been made to pay 8000 rupees, but because he visited the eye camp first, he was given a discount of 3000 rupees and become eligible for the Sankaram package. Mr. Kuppusamy said that he loved the experience of being at the Sankara Eye Camp. He said that the nurses and the doctors were helpful and kind to him on his visit. He says that he will be looking forward to the experience at the hospital when he comes.

Sathyamangalam Camp

Screening process for patients

Mr. Kuppusamy being seen by a doctor

General Wellness Test

Mr. Athul Mohan examining patients 

Another Athul Mohan Shot

Patients being fed after being chosen to get treatment

Trip to India Part 3 (July 21st to July 25th)

This was the second week of my volunteering program in India. I had also registered for a nearby gym since I didn't want to loose the progress I made while in Bloomington. I also met some students from the same college where my father was a professor. It was nice talking to them. Anyway, my time at the hospital began to become a bit of a dull. We served lunch everyday and talked to Mr. Mahendiran, the head of the food services at the hospital. He was one of the closest friends we had in the hospital. We were allowed to go into the biochemical lab in the hospital and experiment with some of the chemicals that they had in there. We were supervised by the head of the lab to make sure we didn't break anything. However, we did not wear much protection. Of course, we weren't allowed to work with anything harmful to us. It was just a bit of fun, but it was probably the most interesting thing for us to work on since we got here. Fortunately, that would change that very week.












On Thursday that week, I got an opportunity to shadow one of the ophthalmologists in the hospital. I became friends with a doctor in training who allowed us to shadow his mentor. We learned a lot of interesting things that day. We were shown how to operate a slit lamp and how to see if a patient has cataracts by shining a flashlight into their eyes. We were allowed to watch as the doctor removed sutures from a patient's eyes after she had received surgery. It was nerve-wracking to watch the procedure but also very interesting. We were shown the pre-procedure for a patient who is about to receive lasik-eye surgery. All of the pictures from that day are below.

The next post will contain a detailed explanation of my visits to the eye camps (both non-paying and paying) on the 26th and 27th of July. 

Trip to India Part 2 (July 14th to July 20th)

So on July 14th, 2014 I began my clinical volunteership program at the Sankara Eye Hospital in Coimbatore. The facility is also known as the Sri Kanchi Kamakote Medical Centre. It was established in 1977 by Dr. R.V. Ramani and became the headquarters for the Sankara Eye Foundation. On the first day, we (my sister and me) were given a tour of the hospital and were introduced to all the head nurses. We made our way to the camp ward where we would spend most of our time at the hospital.

Camp Ward filled with non-paying patients (Photo by Abinand Rejimon)

We also met 4 other students like us who were volunteering at Sankara. However, unlike us, they were staying on the campus of the hospital. We didn't do too much on our first day. We were not assigned too much work on usually just cycled through the hospital asking different nurses to give us some paperwork related jobs. We did get to serve lunch to all the non-paying patients at the hospital (pictures below). The lunch ladies were extremely nice to us.

Dillon and I serving food for non-paying patients (photo by Krishna Patel)

They especially took a liking to my sister and me because we could fluently speak Tamil whereas the others could not. One lunch lady, Lalitha, struck up a chat with me about her son who is apparently the same age as me. He studied engineering and is now working at firm in Chennai. She was extremely proud of him and I was happy that someone in hospital was willing to talk to me. So all in all, our first day was pretty dull, but I was optimistic that we would be happy helping out at the hospital.

Unfortunately, our first week did not improve too much after the first day. We did get to serve food every day at 12:30 and by the end of the week all the lunch ladies took to calling me "thambi" or brother in Tamil which I liked. We did do lots of paperwork at the hospital. We took care of all of the post-op paperwork for a patient. I also completed a case study on the Thursday of our first week. Her name was Rahamath Bee, a 60 year old housewife who had cataracts in both of her eyes. She had just received surgery in her left and would get the right one operated on in another month or so. She was an extremely nice lady who was very happy to answer all of my questions.

Dillon and I filling out paperwork (photo by Jwala Rejimon)

Trip to India (July 5th to July 14th)

Today is August 5th, and I came back from India yesterday night at around 11:00 pm. The next few entries that I post will detail out my trip to India. This will be a quick run down. Not much detail. I wrote down everything I did each day in a notebook so it would easier to write in the blog when I came back. I have lots of pictures taken at Delhi, Agra, Coimbatore, and Kerala. At Coimbatore, I volunteered at Sankara Eye Hospital for 3 weeks. My trip lasted from July 4th to August 4th. I have some interesting experiences and pictures from that time period as well.

So, lets start. Date is July 4th. I'm on United Airlines Flight from Newark to Delhi, non-stop. I sleep for 12 out of the fourteen hours. The travel goes by pretty fast. We land in Delhi and meet my mom and sister who have been in India for a month at Red Fox Hotel. On July 6th, we visit the Taj Mahal in Agra. It was a hot day. I was constantly pouring water on my head in order to prevent heatstroke and nosebleeds. But it was well worth it. The Taj Mahal is extremely beautiful. I will say it is the most astounding building I have ever seen. And to think it was built so long ago. Most of these photos from this experience are on Facebook.

After visiting the Taj Mahal on July 6th, we made our way back to Delhi on the seventh. We visited a few temples today and also saw the Secretariat Building and the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the residence of the president of India. It is the largest residence of any president in the world. Seeing that, made me extremely proud to be an Indian. We also saw the India Gate and the Qutab Minar on this day.

The eight was kind of a free day. We saw a private museum created by an artist named Shams. He made 3-D art with clothing. The name for this type of art style is called Zardozi. Each of the works that Shams worked on took at least 6 or 7 years. This private museum was completely and utterly astounding. I loved the work and the detail that was put into the tapestries. Visit this website, if you want more information on this artist. http://www.shamsembroidery.com/main1.html
Unfortunately, we could not take any pictures of his work. But it left a great impression on me.

On the ninth, we left for Chennai. My mother would be leaving India at Chennai on the 10th. So the rest of our family accompanied her there just to spend some more time with her. The greatest experiences we had in Chennai were mostly food-based. We ate the world famous thalappakati biryani. SOO GOOD. We also saw the flat that my father bought. It was a nice small flat on the tenth floor in the center of Chennai. Very good land and area. About 10 minutes from the airport. I was surprised at the infrastructure in Chennai. It was nothing like the infrastructure we found at Delhi. It was very modern and reminded a lot of American highways.

On the 11th, my mother parted ways from us. She made her way back to the United States and the rest of us made our way to Trivandrum to see my dad's side of the family. We stayed in a beach front hotel in Kovallum. It was a very nice hotel and the view was spectacular. We could hear the ocean roar at night and it was slightly unsettling. A good picture is below.

After Trivandrum we headed to Palakad to visit my great uncle for two days and then finally made our way Coimbatore on July 13th. I will start my volunteership with Jwala (my sister) on July 14th. We slept a lot in those two days. But it was fun and relaxing after a week or so of constant traveling.

I will discuss my stay in Coimbatore in my post tomorrow. There are a lot of pictures to be shared and a lot of cool experiences that I will be discussing.