Day 12

Narayanamma Aunty went to her village the day before and made this for my hair! So sweet of her. 

This leprosy patient had an ulcer on the bottom of his foot from 8 years ago. Even after the ulcer healed, he was paranoid it would come back and he proceeded to wrap a tight bandage around it for all this time. As a result, his big toe has permanently deformed. One of the new doctors that I met today, Dr. Santosh, finally told him he should stop tying it. I watched Dr. Santosh and Peter discuss this patient before him and I took a nice video of it. The whole time the patient was confused and staring around and looked super innocent. I would upload it but it would take forever. 

Ramanamma chews tobacco everyday. Her teeth are red and rotten as a result, and she's not supposed to. Half of the breakfast club members chew and the other half who don't yell at them for doing so. She hides it from "Peter Sir," who yells at her when he sees her doing it. I was super fascinated by it so she showed me the process. The black rock is a paper weight for when she assembles the leaf under a fan. Apparently if you accidentally swallow the leaf, you'll vomit. Yuck. 

I tried to get a picture with Narayannama Aunty showing my hair. 

This Aunty, don't remember her name, is very fervent and animated. When she came up to talk to me once she was yelling very "in my face," so I took a step back and she was very offended that I moved away. Then she yelled at me in front of all the breakfast club that I moved back because I don't like poor people. I didn't know how to explain in Telugu that Americans just like personal space when talking to people so I just smiled awkwardly and pretended like I didn't understand. But anyways, her sister (pictured below) is the one with the piercing on one foot, and the other foot is completely rotten. 

Kalyani and some of the other women complained to the Nurses that they couldn't handle the smell of her rotting flesh and threatened to leave. Peter realized it was because the wounds weren't being cleaned properly so he came to do it himself. Dr. Santosh and I watched. 

Dr. Santosh was impressed by my ability to watch him clean it but he didn't see how many times I turned away. The patient isn't supposed to have any feeling but she kept wincing and complaining of pain every time Peter pushed the forceps into the whole. Peter says she was just being a "fussy and sensitive elderly woman" and that she couldn't actually feel any pain, just sensation. Peter says they'll remove this part of her foot on Monday (today is Thursday), without giving anesthesia. I got excited to watch my first surgery, and Peter and Dr. Santosh told me: "Not surgery. It's a butchering. Just a quick chop off. It's not too exciting." 

EEK!!

One of the disinfectants they use is magenta colored. Peter says they have been adding potassium permanganate to the disinfectant so that it has a color and patients will psychologically feel like there is actual medicine working. When the disinfectant is clear, without the potassium, they complain that the doctor isn't cleaning the wounds properly. 

When Peter was cleaning the other rotten foot (the picture is in yesterday's blog post), he removed some gauze from the hole and a fly came flying out of her foot from behind the gauze. He told me flies will go inside ulcers like these and plant eggs. When the eggs hatch, the doctor has to fish through the wound and remove the maggots, one by one. Peter told me he used to be just as grossed out as me, but my grandpa used to calmly remove maggots from rotting limbs and make Peter do it all the time. 

Dr. Santosh was inspired by Peter's words and told us once of a poor patient who had a fly go up into her sinuses and lay eggs. She came to the hospital complaining that maggots were slithering out of her nose and mouth everyday. Just imagine this Daddy. Maggots in your sinuses.