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.