Last week I was posted at the Communicable Disease Hospital, Thondiarpet, which is an hour and 15 minute drive from my place. The drive back was taxing coz the roads were narrow and my god, the jammmmmmmmmmm! A good part of the drive was spent staring at the rear end of meanass lorries and petrified cattle that had meanass masters( whipppppppp!).
But the hospital per se was beautiful! It was clean(surprise surprise!) and HUGE!! Ok, not that huge, but I didn't quite expect to see a navigation board for a peripheral health center! I think I was expecting a small cubicle for a dispensary and a smaller one for the patient examination room and that's it.
But what we had was a airy foyer, where we interns sat, and 10 looooong wards( most of them could hold 60-100 patients). And this was just one block. There were other blocks with actual tarred roads connecting them.
Most of the cases that came in there were chicken pox/measles/cholera/mumps. Infectious diseases. I haven't had chicken pox earlier, though most of my classmates have had it in their chidhood( the merits of growing up in India). Nonetheless, I found myself sweating it out with a mask and all ,fogging up my glasses and examining a hundred off chicken pox cases. We interns had to do the pre rounds, write review notes and go for rounds with the assistant docs. Chicken pox(chi pee as we fondly diagnosed them as) ward was easy peasy save for a case with encephalitis that we had to refer to an ICU anyway. The measles ward on the other hand, was kind of a toughie. I couldn't quite hear the lungs of bawling infants/toddlers, and they just start crying when they see some one with a stethoscope and a white coat coz they invariably think we are armed with injections and that we love poking kids in the ass with those. sigh*
Beside the mundane chi pee and measles, we even had a case of Tuberous Scleroses who had come in with a history of diarrhea! The downside to all of this were the painful hours I spent examining myself for a rash after an evening of being down with a temperature. Needless to say, I was really disappointed when I couldn't come up with a rash. Dayum!
All in all, Thondiar pet was productive n nice -- the nurses were nice, I didn't sit around and swat flies and I learnt quite a handful.
Unlike the present posting at the Sexually Transmitted Diseases dept. at MMC GGH. It is just way too draaaaaaaaaaaaaaab!
Yesterday, we were sitting around in the male OP waiting for a pateint to swing in with dick troubles. But nay. Nothing happened, besides a call for a pal informing her of her granny's death(RIP)
There are about 8-10 assistant profs at the std department -- the guy docs sit around in poker formation, the lady dos pretend to keep themselves busy by flinting from room to room displaying their gaudy new saree colllection and telling the PGs off, and there are quite a handful of PGs by the way. And then there are us bored interns. And pray, where are the patients?!!
Erm, you know if I'd contracted an STD, i'd have issues walking into huge ugly dirty building that says 'STD BLOCK' in huge block letters. That , plus the fact that the GH is one place where the chances of running into a long lost pal from school aren't remote(this place is crowdedddddddddd). And having the dispensary( where patients from other departments have to queue up for their meds too) bang opposite the std block doesn't help either.
So no wonder we hardly have cases at the STD block. What an utter waste of space and doc-power. And then they gripe about how there are no docs at the peripheral health centers. hmph!
Anyway, I've gotta scoot and attend my 11th consecutive day of not-bunking. Aye aye, 10 and going strong
And yeh., those ARE new:D!
I got brand new caps for my chipped teeth
Cheers!
