Journeys of L: Gremaltes Hospital

Today we went to Gremaltes Hospital in Chennai. We were leaving at 7:30 and I woke up at 7:25... off to a great start. I rushed out to the buses and... there were no buses. So we waited for a little bit and ended up taking the jeep. We had to take 5 big boxes of supplies to the hospital which took up the back of the car so we were crammed in nicely into the middle seat. And, once again, the a/c didn't work. But as we always say, TII or this is India. We have come to expect these conditions so it's no big deal. The drive into Chennai is usually about 2 hours but we got lost on the way so it was closer to 3. We finally found the hospital and by Indian standards it was actually really nice! It started out as a treatment facility for leprosy but it has expanded and now provides care for everyone. The guy who took us around the hospital was great, really nice and I could actually understand the majority of what he was saying. We watched a video on leprosy and it's symptoms which was super corny but I actually really enjoyed it. We have heard so much about leprosy and obviously seen a lot of it so it was nice to get the actual clinical facts about it. Everything we have seen makes more sense now. After the video he took us on a tour of the different departments and we went and met the patients in the leprosy wards. Leprosy and Tuberculosis are both caused by mycobacterium so they are very similar so we saw a few patients with active TB too. We did our best to avoid any coughing, hopefully we don't all come home with it. We visited the lab and got to see a slide under a microscope of the leprosy bacteria and the guy explained all about acid fast testing and what not and it was actually really cool, thank you microbiology. After we left the hospital we stopped at this big mall called the Skywalk and went to Mcdonalds. It was so good and so cheap! Our driver had dropped us off in front of the mall and he speaks zero english so when he drove away we had no idea when he was coming back, so we got our food and went out a waited... and waited, and eventually just ate our food on the side of the street as everyone drove by and stared at us. Finally, Tanner goes and looks for him and he was standing outside the door of the mall waiting for us. Oops. Anyway, we start the trek back home and end up getting lost again. We finally got back to Rising Star after 3 hours or so, and chilled for about an hour until we had clinic duty. Our group has been depleted since the Morley's and Nadya left, and Tyler is at a colony so it was only Me, Tanner, Elle and Nathan. The clinic is open from 4-6 and the kids come in if they are hurt or sick or whatever and we are supposed to treat them. Of the 4 of us I have the most experience so you can imagine our field of knowledge is not that broad. A lot of the kids have been sick with fevers, so we had a lot of kids coming in with that, everyone was fine until one boy came in with a temp of 103.5. yikes. As a side note, all of their drug names are different here so we had to factor that in too. Anyway, I prescribe some Paracetamol (Tylenol) and re check the temp in 4 hours. Well within my scope I'm sure. Then we have this little girl come in with a productive cough, so I listen to her lungs and I decide she has crackles, but I wasn't about to touch that one so I tell her to come in when the doctor gets back. Then we got a little girl who fell and was complaining of pain in her arm. I assessed it and observed range of motion and i was out of ideas of what to do with her. It was crazy, not sure I am qualified to be doing this. We closed the clinic and had dinner which was interrupted by torrential rain which is more than welcome because it cools things down so much. Then we had family time and helped the kids with homework. I was sitting on the ground with some of the boys when I see a massive spider crawling towards us. I was out of there so fast, I told the boys to kill it and I went running out. Shortly after, Elle saw it and came out screaming, of course all the boys in the hostel thought it was hilarious so they cornered us and kept pretending to be throwing the spider on us. It was legitimately terrifying because we knew one of them had it but we didn't know which one. One of them came out with a giant plastic spider on his hand and it looked totally real so we were just beside ourselves. This went on for quite a while and finally I asked Josef where it was cause I knew he would tell me the truth and they said they had thrown it over the balcony. I am now hoarse and have a sore throat from screaming so much. I had seen exactly 3 little spiders since I have been here and I was so pleased that I hadn't seen any more. Now I am on high alert, it was absolutely disgusting. We had to leave family time early because Elle was flying out tonight, it was so sad to see her go! We have big plans for future travels, so I'm sure we will be reunited soon. It's crazy that my time here is almost over, I feel like I have been here for forever but at the same time it has gone by so fast.