Sirens and Lights

I moved house the other day and am now staying at the Hospital Annexe on the main CMC campus…on a floor with a bunch of other international medical students. Also got a new cell phone number: +91 98 944 72097. Life is pretty good. I rush downstairs every morning for breakfast (idlis…yum!) at the YWCA canteen next door to my hostel, and then get to the Casualty Department for my shift from 7:30-3:30. We have the requisite coffee breaks at 10:30, when I get yummy South Indian chai with the ED social worker who is like a surrogate mom here. Generally, the ED stays picks up from 11 on ’til 1, when I usually head for lunch out with the med students (fresh juice and dhosas), and then again around 2:30, half an hour after I get back from lunch. I usually leave after things die down around 3:30 or 4, and head out to do run errands and shop on the main streets in Vellore, Ghandi Road and Ida Scudder Road. Dinner with the med students at one of the three good restaurants in town or in the canteen and then just wandering (”time pass”) until about 10 or 11 when we all head home to crash. It’s a lot of down time, but it’s good for me to regroup and get things together for my study. It’s amazing how much I’ve been learning out here, both in terms of the interface of the hospital and society here, and in terms of medicine (though one of consultants told me yesterday to not focus too much on the clinical stuff because when I have to study basic sciences in the first two years, I’ll be bored because they won’t contain any “masala” the way clinical medicine does…. I thought it was a funny way to say that, though I still think knowing the clinical important will help me remember why I’m chugging through the sciences).

Actually, next week i start a new rotation at CMC. I’ll be spending time at the Community Health and Development program, which attempts to do more public health type work. I’m really excited to see their efforts, which I’ve heard are amazing, and to spend more time with community members outside of the hospital. I still don’t speak Tamil or Hindi, though I’m working on learning a little bit of both. Hopefully, though, I’ll be able to get a lot out of the experience anyway. The week after, I’m spending a few days at the Rural Unit for Health and Social Affairs , a community outreach program, and at the Low Cost Effective Care Unit, where they attempt to provide no frills services to patients so that they can afford the treatments they need. Should be good for community perspectives.

In other news…made plans to celebrate Thanksgiving with a few other Watson fellows in Mamallapuram. Very exciting. Had a fantastic time last Watson meeting, so I’m hoping this will be even half as awesome! It’s funny that I only seem to celebrate Thanksgiving when I’m abroad (my family doesn’t really celebrate it at home). My only “real” Thanksgiving was in Paris two years ago.

Silly note: it’s funny to me how young the doctors are here, because you can get your M.B.B.S (=M.D.) right after college (it’s 4 years of school and a 5th year of internship). This is how it works in most countries (you don’t have to do an undergraduate degree first), but it’s still amusing to me that I’m older than some of these doctors and I’m by no means a non-traditional student in the U.S. when it comes to age. Apparently, two Indian students went to Sweden for 6 months to study there, thus taking time off from their studies here. When they presented their work here at CMC last week, one of the doctors stood up and said that he wishes more Indian students would take time off and not be so afraid to “lose time” as these months or years are truly an investment. I know this sense of “losing time” is true because my decision to take this year off was definitely greeted by surprise from many Indian people. One of the interns told me that the idea here is that you need to start working early so that you can make enough money to support you and your parents (in Indian culture…and a lot of other cultures for that matter….the idea is that your parents support you until you finish your studies and settle down, and then you support them). Just thought it was interesting that they are moving towards taking more time off…. Personally, I’m a big fan.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2003 at 11:59 am and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.