The Swing of Things at Pasam and the FIMRC Clinic in Action!

It's been a while since I last posted mainly because the wifi at the FIMRC volunteer house has been pretty spotty. Otherwise, everything else has been going well. I've spent the last couple of days working mostly at Pasam. Every Wednesday, Pasam holds an ophthalmology clinic. This encourages people to come get their eyes examined and basically just entails Dr. Mascarenhas (Pasam's main doctor who is Indian and 83 years old) focusing on ophthalmology cases. I first observed Dr. Mascarenhas perform a pterygia surgery. Pterygia is the growth of extra "scar" tissue on the eye usually cases by over exposure to UV light. If the scar tissue starts to grow close to the pupil it can impair the patient's vision and requires surgery. The surgery is fairly simple. The extra tissue is scraped away using a small scapel with the patient under local anesthetic. Antibiotic ointment and a simple gauze dressing are then applied to the eye. I then assisted with some dressings. The first patient was a male burn victim whose hands were extremely disfigured. The story of his injury was very sad. Long story short, his wife tried to commit suicide by lighting herself on fire and he tried to save her and suffered severe burns. The reason his wife tried to kill herself was that her mother in law was torturing her but in her final statement to the police before dying, she said her injuries were an accident. After helping two other patients, I went upstairs to help with the ophthalmology clinic. Dr. Mascarenhas saw cases including glaucoma, cataracts, astigmatism and dry eyes. I learned how to use an ophthalmometer to test for astigmatism and perform a tear strip test to measure how the tear ducts are functioning. 

The set up for the ophthalmology clinic.

In the afternoon after all the ophthalmology patients had been seen, Dr. Mascarenhas told me about the earlier years of his life and how he started Pasam. After studying in Germany, he realized money did not make him happy and he wanted to come back to India to help the poor. When he first returned to India, he simply wandered the streets wearing his stethoscope. He said people would see his stethoscope and come up and ask for medical care. He would get patients to sit in line of the side of the road and wait to be seen. He said he would sometimes build a small thatched hut to work out of. Later, he began operating out of a van and then established his first hospital which was simply a large thatched hut. Eventually he established Pasam hospital in Kodaikanal as it is today. He said he doesn't even know where the hospital came from because he had never intended to open one. He says we would have preferred to continue wandering and not be boxed in by four walls. He also told me how he started Pasam's annual plastic surgery clinic. German doctors volunteer their services and travel to Pasam to perform the surgeries. He said that thousands of patients come to the clinic each year but that the doctors pick the 200 most severe cases to operate on. Many of the patients are burn victims who are severely disfigured. The operations performed at Pasam's plastic surgery clinic have allowed many of the patients to become functioning members of society again.

The whole FIMRC gang in front of the Pasam sign.

On Thursday, I once again returned to Pasam and observed Dr. N. He saw a bunch of general cases including worms, an ear infection, chest pain and a follow up on the pterygia patient. I also got to hang out with the nurses for a little which was fun. They are all so nice and want to talk to us although they don't speak much English so it can be difficult to communicate. They all wear plain sarees to work and are very jealous of our scrubs and said they want to have scrubs as their uniform too.

Hanging out with some of the nurses at Pasam.

We walked to a really good Tibetan restaurant to eat lunch. Then we walked around the lake in town. The lake is surrounded by a bunch of vendors selling a variety of goods. I bought an awesome Christmas sweater for 100 rupees which I will definitely be breaking out at school come winter!

Some of the vendors at the lake.

The lake... looks prettier on Wikipedia.

Then we walked back to the volunteer house from the lake. When I got back the FIMRC clinic, which is in the same building as the volunteer house was in full swing. There were a few patients including a young boy who needed stitches in his foot removed and an older woman with an upper respiratory tract infection. The clinic is able to provide convenient and low cost medical care to local people. Instead of having to spend about 200 rupees for a cab to the hospital and another 200+ rupees for consultation and medicine, they can get the same care for 50 rupees. The clinic operates on a case by case basis sometimes providing care free of cost based on the patient's family situation.

The building for both the volunteer house and the clinic.

The setup inside the clinic.

Later that night we decided to walk to town and go to an Internet cafe because our wifi had been down for a while. If you didn't notice, this day was filled with lots and lots of walking. I would guess I walked a solid 6 or 7 miles. The walk back to the volunteer house is all uphill and is actually pretty tiring!

On Friday, my morning at Pasam was occupied helping with dressings. Some patients we saw earlier in the week came in for new dressings and we also had a few new patients. We also administered asthma medicine to two patients using a nebulizer. Most excitingly, it was Dr. Mascarenhas' birthday! He was turning a young 84 years old. At tea time, we had sang to him and had cake and other snacks.

The setup of the dressing room at Pasam.

In the afternoon, I once again helped with the FIMRC clinic. It was a slow day with only a few patients. One of the patients was a six year old boy who had fallen while playing with other children and had a small cut on his forehead. Unfortunately for him, he had to get a tetanus injection. He was so scared but he said it didn't end up hurting very much.

The patient at the FIMRC clinic.

For dinner, Erika (one of the other volunteers) and I decided to try and cook vegetable lentil soup. We didn't really have all the right ingredients but we decided improvise and make it "Indian style". We even made the vegetable soup from scratch. I am pretty proud to say that it turned out delicious! We got rave reviews from all the other volunteers.

The final product... maybe I have a future in cooking if the whole doctor thing doesn't work out!

Later that night, we got word that a parade was passing by outside for a random Hindu festival. I'm still not sure exactly what the occassion was, but I think it had something to do with the local temple that is up the street from us. It was definitely a fun and lively scene regardless of whether I knew what was going on.

The main "float" in the parade.

The locals dancing in celebration.

I hope you enjoyed the updates and pictures! If the wifi cooperates, I will try to post more regularly.

Liz