There and Back Again A journey to India with a short stop on the way in England. The trip to India is for a combination of spiritual pursuits and volunteer medical work

Well the other day I had an education in the local health care system. In the morning I had a western resident appear at the clinic with severe abdominal pain of sudden onset in the upper abdomen. Her exam was otherwise unremarkable except for moderate hypertension consistent with her pain. I placed an iv and gave her pain medication until it was under control. The trip in town to obtain x-rays and a subsequent ultrasound at one location was a slow and bouncing trip with the usual delays due to the constantly shifting mix of animals, people and vehicles that share the roads. The xray tech brought the abdominal film to me and placed it on the viewer upside down, when I corrected it, he and two of his fellows immediately returned it to the original position, insisting that I was wrong. They could not tell me what structure the breast shadows, now extending upward from below were. At any rate, the film was otherwise normal. A physician conducted the ultrasound and was very competent and helpful - also a normal study. We then went to the Jain hospital to get lab studies done. It was the dirtiest medical facility I have ever been in and they were making no effort to clean anything in the area we were in while we were there. Fortunately we had brought clean sheets for our patient to use on their gurney. I made sure all needles, etc were clean and all went well otherwise. Our patient had improved during this time and we returned and placed her in our medical unit for observation. Fortunately she improved to normal this iv fluids, no food, and pain medicine. I do not look forward to the time someone needs to have an operation. The process of getting our small hospital usable is full of local politics as money is an issue as it is everywhere. I hope to meet with some of the required people to move this forward next week - we'll see.