Day 23

I'm spending this week with the nurses. They are the busiest people I've ever seen. They literally know and do everything. People have always said nurses are amazing but it's cool to come to this realization myself. I had trouble understanding what happened to this patient, but I think I got the general gist from Jayapal uncle. Apparently he took his medicine this morning, then felt really bad so he told the nurses that he was going out into the town for breakfast. Instead of breakfast he got super drunk and had a bast gastric reaction to it. He came back to the ward and fell on the ground convulsing in pain before he made it to his bed. The nurse asked Narayannama Aunty to go smell him and she said he reeked of alcohol. They let him lie on the bed for a bit after giving him some medicine, and everytime I went back to take a peek on him he was mumbling on the floor, flailing his arms. They had to take him to the general hospital for an expert doctor's advice. They ended up bringing him back from the hospital and gave him a lot of expensive injections and hooked him up to a hospital tank. 

I got a video of him but I don't know if it uploaded properly.

Day 22

I found this little one in the back shaving his dad's face for him. I haven't heard him complain or look upset once. Definitely looks bored frequently though. I asked him if he'd want a soccer ball and he said yes, so I'll buy one for him this week. 

Old lady again. I didn't realize that she comes every day. When she was leaving she asked me for food money but I told her I didn't have any on me. I asked her where her kids were and she explained to me in Telugu that I couldn't understand. Her voice was too soft and quiet and it looked like she was about to cry. I wish I could have understood what she said about them because when she came back again I found out that she's the mother of one of the Damien staff members that everyone calls "Chinnabaya" or little boy. He seemed embarrassed when she told me this as he was regauzing the ulcer on her foot. I wanna figure out the story behind this. 

She has some weird tumorous growth under her skin. I asked her what it was but she just told me it started out small, grew really big, and wasn't painful at all. The nurse saw it and couldn't put her finger on the name of it. 

This TB patient is the thinnest I've seen come into the clinic this past month. He was as tall as me and weighed only 30 kg (I weigh exactly 50 kg). His eyes were all glazed over and you could tell he had no clue what was going on. 

This patient came in to see if she has leprosy or neuritis. If she has leprosy, she is eligible for surgery and will be admitted to the inpatient clinic. If she has neuritis, then daily physical therapy will help restore movement in her hands. 

Day 20

The month is ending and the breakfast club is headed home. Decided to take some last pictures. 

She likes photos of herself not smiling. I just realized we kind of match too. 

A dysfunctional family? Jayapal uncle is ALWAYS on his phone. He doesn't get to go home because his hand still needs more therapy. I claim it's because he is always on the phone. 

Got to go home on the bike. So fun. 

Went to Mohan Reddy's jewelry store in Nellore, where aunty buys all her jewelry. This is the electrical wiring above the alley with all of the jewelry stores. 

Mr. Mohan Reddy himself. I swear he's a local celebrity.  Reminded me of Joe Pesci acting as My Cousin Vinny being like as a car salesman instead of lawyer. Unfortunately this picture didn't capture his mullet. 

Day 19

I told Kalyani I wanted to see what her kids looked like so she brought me photos! Shermilla, Parmilla, and Navyasri, in height order. 

I moved up to the MDR Culture lab for the day to see how they determine which patients are resistant to which drugs. I was super impressed with how nice the lab was. It may as well have been straight from a Western country. The view outside the window (a septic tank, some rubble, and a dirt field littered with pigs and cows) reminded me that I was in India. 

2/7 patients were MDR. Super cool biotech process. Dr. Santosh wants me to make a booklet documenting the whole lab process of determining resistance from sputum samples. 

Her surgery hand has shrunk a lot. 

I went to a seminar at the end of the day about leprosy reaction patients. Peter gave a presentation on how to recognize and treat leprosy reactions. Dr. Santosh brought in a new in patient that day. Her name is Suma and she's part of a caste which frequently gets leprosy, apparently. Dr. Santosh recognized that she was a reaction patient and thought it best to bring her to Damien for treatment. Peter claims the best treatment for reaction is bed rest, for both its physical and mental benefits. If reaction patients don't come in for bed rest, they continue doing their daylabor and subject themselves to a lot of immune-suppressing psychological stress, hindering their progress. The breakfast club told me that she got leprosy 17 days ago and her husband left her immediately because of it. I don't think the Damien staff knew this because during the meeting they were talking about how it was a good thing that she "wasn't married," because it avoids complications with a potential pregnancy and undergoing treatment. 

Day 17

Cute baby from across the street again. I die. 

This patient had MDR-TB, completed his 2 years of treatment, and was proclaimed as cured by all of the staff at Damien. While this should have called for celebration, the patient claimed to still have a brutal cough and seemed very psychologically distraught. Mr. ___ counseled him for twenty minutes trying to convince him that he was fine and just had irritated lungs. Mr. ____ finally had his colleagues  come and refer the patient to a lung specialist. 

This is a TB patient's mother who came in for her son, and ended up spontaneously getting treatment for leprosy. Funny how that works out. 

ZOMGBFF4L. The breakfast club was getting loony and laughing and talking in Telugu really fast, so I didn't really know what was going on. They just told me to take this picture. I think it's cute!

This guy is an in patient for ulcers on his feet. His wife is staying with him at the hospital and I spoke with her for a while. They have one son who is eighteen, and was born with really bad vision. He quickly became blind, and apparently tried to fix the problem with surgery in Chennai. The surgery was unsuccessful though. She said he sits at home. The son was supposed to come to the hospital but I think I left too early to get a chance to meet him. I'd like to talk to him at some point. 

Boyztown scrubbed out and enjoying comaraderie. 

This past patient came in to consult about LEP: the Life Enhancement Program. On a case by case basis, Damien provides goats, cows, sheep, or those store shack things to its patients to help them maintain a steady living with their disabilities. This patient was talking to Peter about buying a sheep who was arguably pregnant. I didn't know what the Telugu words for sheep or pregnant were until way after the conversation began so I sort of missed the whole LEP process. 

Day 16

First off, let me mention that I have eleven ant bites on my left shoulder blade. I also realized why all of the people at Damien keep wanting to put braids in my hair. It's because I show up to work with a giant bun in my hair, which my cousin says is not at all fashionable. I also am being a total hypochondriac about having TB. 

I feel stupid for not knowing his name since I sit in his office for so many hours every day, but today he showed me how to spot TB bacilli on the microscope. 

The red thingies. 

Peter stopped by to show me an old newsletter from Damien. I was confused why he showed it to me until a minute later I spotted my grandfather on the far right of this picture. Wooh!

He prepared more slides. He told me he hadn't seen this sort of lab equipment till he started working formally. I told him I had started using this type of equipment in the eighth grade. I never realized Indian science education doesn't have a practical element to it. 

My cousin just told me how science classes work in India. I was complaining about labs in the US and how they take 4 hours and never have I understood why teachers can't just have us answer questions on a written report of what the experiment and findings are instead of having us actually do it. But my cousin told me that teachers here do exactly that and the class ends up confused and doesn't understand what's going on. 

The sir in the lab went for his coffee break so I went to go visit my friends in physiotherapy. The breakfast club had their bandages completely removed for the first time in three weeks and had a nice soak in soapy water to clean their hands up. I wanted to take a nice picture but they kept pulling the same prank on each other: hand hovering above the head of the person in front of you. Who knows. 

Jayapal uncle wanted a nice photo of just himself. I think word has gotten around that I'm sending photos to Damien once I go back to the US and now everyone wants a personal shot haha. I asked him the other day if he prayed since he is Christian and his response was that religion for him is when he watches his daughter sleeping. So cute! 

Mahaboob Basha! Was born with an extra thumb attached to his thumb and I've been DYING to see it. I finally got a chance today. All of the black marks are where he had surgery. Now that I'm looking at this picture I'm actually wondering if he had two thumbs attached to his main thumb. I feel like I can see three nails. 

I told him to pose for a picture of him proudly waving his hand! He kept laughing but I finally got a decent one. 

Back to the lab. Had to prepare the sputum slides to check for bacilli. So stomach turning watching him smear the stringy green sputum from the containers onto the glass slides. There was a short ten minute preparation of the slides using methylene blue, h2sO4, and one other chemical. 

The leftover chemicals looked really pretty in the sink. 

This guy had MDR-TB and received treatment for two years. This is the last month of treatment, and this whole time his sputum slides have come out negative for the bacilli. But because he still has a lingering cough from weakened lungs after all this time, he wouldn't believe sir when sir told him he was cured and should be celebrating. They spoke for 20 minutes and the patient was still super skeptical. This is an example of how psychologically affected these patients are. 

I'm so mad at myself for not taking a picture but three dude friends came in and one of them was told that he had TB. His friends were staring at me and joking around etc while his friend was being told such grave news. The sir had to explain to them to all be careful not to get infected and catch it from each other, and that they couldn't do crazy things like share needles when they get tattoos etc. The sir also explained that the infected patient got TB either from HIV or because he was super underweight. Apparently chewing tobacco causes you to not be hungry, and these guys were super thin cause they just chewed all the time. My cousin just said she's noticed a lot of people who chew tobacco get TB. The three dudes also each had one ear piercing. The guys walked out of the room and I thought they had left when one returned and stepped on the scale in front of me. He asked me to read the weight and when I leaned over to see what it said I realized it was a ploy to look down my shirt! Ah. 

Day 15

I caught Kalyani before she had her hair braided. So long and shiny, without conditioner! My hair hasn't grown past my shoulders my entire life. So jealous. She puts coconut oil in it everyday and she's been forcing me to do it too since I forgot to bring conditioner to India. 

The doctors were having trouble figuring out how to treat this guy so Dr. Santosh decided to submit a full case history to expert doctors for their opinion. This guy has only had leprosy for 7 months (which is basically nothing) and has spent a total of 20,000 Rupees (which is the yearly salary of a family living on a dollar a day aka a TON), and has visited 4 different private and governmental clinics trying to find proper treatment. He had trouble understanding the doctor's questions about his previous treatment so his son answered for him. Everyone at the clinic says his son is a super sharp fellow. 

Here are the medicines he is currently taking. 

This little girl has hypopigmentation on her arms and neck so she was referred here. Dr. Santosh said she was just malnourished due to worms living in her gut. 

I'm spending this week in the TB lab. This is where patients come to provide their sputum samples to determine whether their lungs contain the TB bacilli. 

Day 14

Swetha (apparently it's Swetha and not Sweta, looks like I've got it wrong this whole time) and her grandma before night church 

Finally spotted the super cute baby across the street that everyone's been telling me about. SO CUTE

Bored during church. selfies woohoo! It lasted for THREE HOURS. One of the hours was for prayer. The father asked everyone to pray for those who had leg problems and trouble walking. He then asked people who felt an immediate reduction in leg pain following the prayer to come to the stage for testimony. We also prayed for heart problems, back pain, joint pains, throat pain from acid reflux due to spicy food (..only in india..), and eye problems. 

Day 13

View of the school with students sitting outside studying. 

I ate some tamarind candy at the shack below and asked where the garbage was for my wrapper. It was the field to my left, har har har. 

 Ma look at how tall and thin Sweta is compared to me. 

I found ONE bag of chocolate in my suitcase after losing everything at the airport before coming. Since everyone was being so generous with little gifts I decided it was the right time to return the favor. Everyone was super excited about the hershey's nuggets, or "from the USA chocolates!" that I brought. Kalyani took ten home for her friends and family. 

Everyone wanted me to take pictures of them and get them developed and send them to them since they don't have cameras, so the afternoon photo shoot began. I don't like this one of me and Kalyani so I think we should try again at some point. My relationship with Kalyani was always at a table. It was weird seeing myself in a picture with her and both of us standing up. I never realized she was so small. I keep dwarfing those around me. 

I finally got Narayanamma Aunty to smile! I told her it didn't matter that she didn't have teeth. I just wanted a picture of her looking happy since she's always so cheery in person. 

So hard to get pictures of everyone actually smiling and not just staring at the camera. They still don't believe me when I tell them that they look better in photos when they smile. Narayanamma took this one. I don't think she had ever taken a photo before. 

I love this one! 

Went back home and talked to the school kids for a bit. One of the 10th graders named Sai took my camera and took photos of his friends playing cricket during recess. This is one of them I guess. 

Jyothi Akka works at the house and this is her son who hates me. Literally throws himself onto the floor in a temper tantrum at the sight of me. So unfortunate because I would love to play with him. 

The boys invited me to teach them English during study hours but got too distracted playing cricket and never came. The girls, however, were super interested in hearing what I had to say about American life. Once I told them that boys and girls can be platonic friends with each other in America they all told me they wanted to move there haha :)

This is me being super super sweaty in the front of the classroom. I took three baths on this day. 

Went to my cousin's in-laws place. My cousin's new husband started a company called Innoswift Solutions. They develop websites for small entrepreneurial companies in the US. (Ma this is Sheshi's company)

This is the inside of their new office. They currently have four employees. 

Here are her husband's parents. (Ma these are sheshi's parents)