Day 1

The patients wait in line outside the clinic to seek care for their various ailments of leprosy. Mondays are especially busy. 

Many of the patients come to physiotherapy to help with the movement of their hands and feet, before and after surgery. Peter, my father's childhood friend and my grandfather's apprentice, is the physiotherapist on hand at the clinic. I shadowed him today and he graciously provided me a lot of background information and a smooth introduction into the clinic. We walked around the clinic for a while and came across a number of different cases. 

This lady came to the clinic to seek treatment for a lesion on her foot. The doctors insist that she wear shoes in order to protect her feet and prevent lesions but she is very traditional and refuses to wear them. The image below is an image of her walking away from the clinic barefoot after her consultation.  

Lesions and ulcers from leprosy are supposed to be painless, but this man suffers an unknown autoimmune disorder that causes his lesions to be extremely painful. Peter described the pain as constant pinching. His lesions completely covered his body and he seemed very physically distressed. Super sad to see. 

Leprosy's bane and blessing is that there is no sensation at the nerve endings. This causes many people to have hand and foot injuries of which they are unaware, since they cannot feel any pain. This man had an ulcer on the bottom of his foot that was literally a giant decaying hole. I'm so grateful this wasn't painful to him because it looks awful, yet had he felt pain it wouldn't have gotten this bad in the first place. 

Peter and I went back to his office to chat every now and then. He told me he learned the technical side of physiotherapy in school, but the practical side he learned from my dad's dad. He said he felt extremely lucky to be able to teach his mentor's granddaughter (me!) I somehow managed to find these old pictures of my grandpa on my laptop that I took a couple of summers ago. In the picture above he's seated with Dr. Claire Vellut, founder of the Damien Foundation. She recently received an award for her outstanding efforts in India. She is close friends with my grandpa. 

This is my grandpa (probably around my age) receiving his degree for physiotherapy. 

He travelled extensively throughout South East Asia during his career, disseminating his knowledge in physiotherapy for victims of leprosy. 

When the Damien Foundation was first taking root in the early sixties, my grandparents had the grace of meeting Belgian royalty who came to see the foundation's efforts in the leprosy colony where my grandparents lived and worked. My grandmother is on the far left. 

Back to work. 

 

This man is seen with a post-operative plaster of paris cast on one foot, with custom made shoes on his other foot. 

The deformities on his toes are seen here. 

A lesion on the underside of his foot is visible in this photo. Apparently the large black burn hole has something to do with enabling him to walk in this cast. I didn't really understand Peter's explanation of it. 

He waited in the Peter's office/physiotherapy room to get his cast removed for inspection/cleaning. After the cast was removed, his foot underneath revealed this: 

A new lesion has formed on the ball of his big toe. 

The two bones from the toes following the big toe were surgically removed due to infection. At the cost of appearing physically shorter and disfigured, this man's foot will hopefully stave off further infection to his nerves. 

After seeing so many disfigured feet today I couldn't help document my own. My uncle once told me a few years ago that he read a French book whose author claimed a sense of a person's overall health could be gaged by the cleanliness of his or her feet. I spend a considerable amount of money on monthly pedicures to keep my toes groomed, and it seems strange knowing so many people could care less about this body part.  

 This man received surgery for his eye, enabling him to close his lids using his facial muscles. As part of his physiotherapy, he was asked to chew gum on the side of the face that underwent surgery so as to exercise his forehead and jaw muscles, whose tendons are connected to the eyes. He sat in front of this mirror watching himself chew the whole time I was in the hospital--a full four hours. Chewing and self-reflection. 

This man is an autorickshaw driver. The tendons in his hand were shortened, causing his fingers to cripple as shown in the image below. 

Peter (in solid blue shirt) worked with him to stretch the tendon once again so that his fingers won't cripple and bend. Of everything that I saw today, nothing really grossed me out until I watched this. Something about watching limbs move in ways that they don't want to move really freaks me out. Peter is angry with him for not having changed his profession as an auto driver yet. The motion of clamping down on the steering wheel with his hand is counterproductive to the stretching motions he does in physiotherapy.

Peter in his office 

 While Peter completed administrative duties, patients would enter his office asking questions about their treatment. This man went to another hospital and received the proper dosage of antibiotics to cure him, but he was convinced it wasn't working since he wasn't seeing immediate results. Peter had to reassure him that the dosage was correct and must continue with his treatment. 

This man had a very quizzical look on his face when he saw me, and kept it there while I proceeded to take a picture of him. 

This young fellow gave me a laugh when I noticed that in spite of having a cast on his diseased hand he still humored himself by painting his pinky with nail polish, as many young drivers in India do. 

This guy had hair that looked fake--literally could have be a wig coming from a little girl's doll. I have never seen curls so perfectly formed. He reminded me of Kanye West's version of Jesus Christ. Jesus walks...on a newly bandaged foot...

He claims his name is Mahesh Babu (famous Telugu movie star) while Peter jokingly refers to him as "kothi," meaning monkey in Telugu. Hopefully I learn this jolly lab technician's real name tomorrow. He asked me to take a photo of him after he removed stitches from a patient's hand. 

This woman came in to seek Peter's advice about the lesions cropping up all over her body. I could not understand the conversation they had.