The other non-French white people in Pondicherry

Just a quick shout out to our new friends we met at Coffee.com last night and had dinner with.

Matt and Chris are two American University alums now working with and NGO west of Pondicherry.  I can say 1) it was nice seeing other Americans in Pondicherry, and 2) that there’s someone out there working to change the huge cultural inertia we’ve all been frustrated with.

Their website is linked below.

www.dalitsolidarity.org

Matt also showed us how to get rid of the funny preservative called glycerol in the beer.  Tim was wondering if we were going to go into renal failure, then we reminded him that would be ethylene glycol.

Buffet and babies

We now have not only an official hangout for CIT2 (Coffee.com), but also an official Pondicherry buffet. We had dinner last night at the Promenade Hotel and it was very nice. The ambience was impressive with a view of the ocean and great a/c. The only thing that could have made the evening better would have been if Dr. and Mrs. Mark Collins had showed up.

We joined NICU rounds this morning. It is interesting to realize how heavily they rely on physical exam findings both for diagnosis and daily management. They have several premature infants with hyperbilirubinemia under bili lights and estimate the duration of light therapy based on the initial elevated level, then choose a stop date and check a rebound level at some point. I don’t think many of us back home would be comfortable without our TB levels at least daily. They’ve had a recent outbreak of fungal sepsis, mostly Candida, which has been concerning them greatly. They actually lost an almost month old baby to fungal sepsis just a couple days ago. The outbreak seems to be increasing the awareness of infection control and I was impressed that the attending washed his hands in between all pts and used hand sanitizer, somthing I have not see elsewhere in the hospital.

Micro and coffee

I had a nice discussion with the head of Microbiology at MGMCRI today. We got a tour of the facilities. They have minimal equipment, but they have great amounts of space. They are poised to take off if funding comes through, but that is not likely in the near future. There is no C. difficile to be found at this hospital, I am told. They also have OK responses to empiric treatment of infections with cephalosporins, while the government hospital has good responses treating with penicillin and gentamicin. There is a world of infection control research to be done here. Nobody is doing it. Yet.

The latest from coffee.com, as mentioned by Alicia, is that they have added the reverse osmosis info to the menu. Emboldened by this, I gave them some feedback on their website and business cards. I hope to be working here by the end of the week.

Cozy bus ride.

We are back at the official CIT2 hangout, Coffee.com and enjoying ourselves once again. I’m amazed that Desiree remembered all of our names, except for mine, which is understandable- I am quite forgettable. Paras is happy that she recalled his as he thinks she is kind of cute. She also added a note on the menu that their ice is made with water that is filtered by reverse osmosis to avoid further annoying questions such as Gopal’s yesterday. We took the bus into town again and this trip was not as pleasant as our last. I think the bus route is much more popular on Mondays than over the weekend. It was a bit hot, crowded and without the festive music. Unfortunately, it seems to be very difficult to get the rickshaws to take us into town so I don’t think we have much of a choice but to chance the bus again.

Today was our first day on the wards as the others have mentioned. Brian summed up our experiences on the peds side well. I also was very impressed with the federally-funded immunization program and the technology of the NICU. I am excited to spend more time there tomorrow. As Brooke mentioned, shoes have to be removed before entering all ICU’s and interesting enough, we had to put on a gown before entering the NICU. It is a very strange feeling to walk around the NICU in barefeet. I’m going to spend some time in the theatre with the pediatric surgeon on Wednesday which should be interesting. I’m hoping the scrub techs wear fancy scrub dresses as they do down under.

I think we are going to finish our coffee and find a restaurant on the beach for dinner. Then another ride on the rickshaws back to the hospital.

Random Musings in Pondi…

So Brian, Tim and Brooke have done a great job in expressing the feelings that we had today at our first day on the wards. There really is no reason to rehash the things that I thought about it earlier, so I will just present some musings and casual observations of the CIT2 group: (FYI this is supposed to be humorous…)

– Tim has been fervently trying to become friends with the cow-next-to-the-hostel (whom I call Betsy). Unfortunately Betsy wants nothing to do with Tim. Poor Tim….

– I have succumbed to peer pressure and now will be joining the group in trying to become more South Indian, that makes the total tally 3 men with a ‘stache. We now need to work on Brian who keeps telling us that his Asian genes only allow him to grow 7 hairs randomly on his face. More to follow on this front…

– It really only takes 50 mg of Benadryl to take down the giant we refer to as Brooke. It also makes her itch free We will keep this in mind for later times…

– Speaking of Brooke, there seems to be a fairly large following of people that are intrigued by her height. I think that we have a great entrepreneurial opportunity in charging people 5 rupees to meet Brooke and 10 rupees for a picture. Gopal would like me to point out that this is not a CIT2 sanctioned activity

– We are now on Day 4 of malaria watch. So far, most of us have >15 mosquito bites yet there are no fevers. We will continue to update you on malaria-watch ’08. This means that the malaria medication might be working and the doxycycline is making us acne free. We win on both accounts really…

– Gopal brought up an interesting notion yesterday. He wanted to know what would be our “closer music” if we were going to close the 9th inning. He was less than enthused to hear that mine would be Bon Jovi’s “Living On A Prayer”. I’m not quite sure what made him unhappy about that, perhaps the fact that it is from a hairband (when I have none) or because of the lack of confidence that I have (hence the song)

– Indeed, coffee.com has become the CIT2 sanctioned coffeeshop. One way or another we will make it there perhaps daily….

– This is day 2 of the bus rides. Today was not as good as yesterday as there were roughly 200 people on the bus that was meant for perhaps 50. We are not sure that we will be taking the bus again however it would make coming to coffee.com particularly tough.

– Last night we learned and played a rousing game of euchre. We think that after consulting wikipedia for the correct rules of the game that we actually played it right….