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| My room at the hospital. My bed in on the left, and Jane's is on the right. We have a bathroom across the hall. |
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| This autorickshaw is about to pull over and pick up 6 of us for the 5 min journey into the nearest village. They officially hold 5 including the driver! |
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| The view from my room...a grove of banana trees. |
It has become hotter these last few days, and I have developed an incredibly itchy heat rash which I am constantly scratching, and taking four showers a day for light relief. Our room is sweltering at night - the hottest room in the building! - and I am finding it hard to sleep. I changed beds today to be more underneath the fan, so hopefully this will help!
I thought I would explain a bit about the hospital. It is set off the road in a really nice grove with coconut and banana trees everywhere. We saw a komodo dragon the other day wandering about! It was huge - I thought it was a crocodile. There are four men's wards (acute, sub acute, chemical dependency and a group home for patients who are stable but who do not have a family willing/able to look after them) and four women's wards with the same function. There is also a children's ward, a nurses block (where I'm staying) and an outpatient's department and pharmacy. although Antara subsidises drug costs, patients still have to pay a proportion of the cost, even for the drugs patients receive whilst in the hospital, which I assumed would be free! But alas, no NHS in India.
So far the patients have been mostly stable, and I have seen no distressing incidents! The nurses are very friendly and the patients well looked after.
Our role as volunteers mostly involves entertainment - we organise activities such as art classes, films, games etc. The general day to day life can be very dull, as patients are not allowed to leave their wards, and so (I hope) offer relief and amusement. I have also been taking the opportunity to shadow as many professions as i can, and we sat in on a clinical Psychologist's assessment today, which was very interesting. The child has behavioural problems (he tried to set fire to the house, was restless, shouted at his parents etc) and they sent him to the psychiatrist to prescribe a drug, and then offered the family therapy.
The volunteers are going out for a meal tonight which should be good! My last meal out (which was like a kebab, but with curried egg and salad inside - sounds a bit grim but it was delicious!) cost 17p, so I am not breaking the bank at all!
Good to hear that your quarters are pleasant. Are you sure it was a komodo dragon? I thought they only lived in Komodo and surrounding islands. They are incredibly dangerous and would eat people for breakfast. We visited Komodo when we were in Indonesia and saw them completely destroy a goat in a few minutes (bit like Jurassic Park).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, back to you. I'm sure you'll find lots of ways to amuse your patients. Have you thought of singing them one of your songs or reading them one of your poems??
Love from us all
Rx
In India, there are no rules as to how many/ how much you can fit on an autorickshaw ;)
ReplyDeleteThat being said, maybe you can find some prickly heat powder for the heat rash? I've had that too while transitioning home from the UK and it's not so fun. What's the temperature like there? (:
Haha and as for free drugs in India, I guess that's just wishful thinking...
Good to hear from you and to see your room. Interested to see the mosquito nets over your bed. I have a photo of my fathers bedroom when he was in in India in the 1930's, it looked exactly the same!!So not much has changed there then in the last 80years.
ReplyDeleteRuth: it definitely looked like a komodo dragon, and I can't think what else it was! Maybe a relative. Or lost.
ReplyDeleteNo I have not sang any of my songs...thats a pleasure purely for the family!
Marchaine: the prickly heat has gone down so I don't think I'll need anything.; But if it comes back, I will look out for some powder!
Granny: I told some patients that my great grandparents lived in the part of India that is now Pakistan. They began to grumble about Pakistan and told me that it wasn't very nice and neither were the people!! Yes, I doubt the style of building has changed much in the last few years, in fact I don't think much will have changed at all!