Again, we took breakfast after morning prayer. We had dosa and some kind of split pea soup. Annalisa, Claudia, Simi and I took a short break while Emily, Samir, Therese, Vickie, and Abhishek went on rounds with Dr. Clement. Dr. M had the morning off, as there were only a few outpatient visits, and Dr. Chakko was out for the day, so it was shaping up to be a quiet day at the hospital. It was very cool today, maybe 70 or 80F in the morning.
We played with some of the kids until teatime at 11, and even convinced them to try it. After tea, Vickie, Claudia, and I worked with Dr. Clement, who had a number of interesting cases. One patient presented with acute abdominal pain, and he explained how to diagnosis either renal colic or tuberculosis by urinalysis (it turned out to be a kidney stone). Another patient had an ulcerating cellulitis on the foot, where the ulcers had healed but there was now chronic edema. Physical exam findings turned Dr. Clement to lymphatic filariasis, a disease we shouldn’t see in the US. Other conditions included bacterial, viral, and fungal infections, and a recovering stroke patient. We also had the chance to listen to a systolic heart murmur, with the same patient also potentially having a septal defect.
Before leaving Dr. Clement, he showed us pictures and a video he took a week ago of the elephant that broke through the fence. It was right outside his house! We went to Rajeev’s after lunch to get water for the trip to Coimbatore, and of course they insisted on feeding us – vada and chutney – always delicious.
At 3, we left for Coimbatore with Walter, meeting Arun at the CSI All Souls’ Church. We had tea and banana bajji across the street, and then Samir and I went next door for haircuts; Arun took the girls to a shopping part of town. We had some time to explore the area a bit before Arun returned to pick us up, but by the time we got back to the meeting point, the girls were gone! We had no way of contacting them, so it turned into a search party in the dark in a strange city with huge crowds…not encouraging. Finally, after Arun located them by simply asking doormen at various stores along the street where this group of girls had gone, we rejoined and headed to one of his favorite restaurants. As we waited for a table, we went to a neighboring shop to buy fruits and vegetables. We had a huge dinner of chicken, fried rice, shawarma, mutton soup, naan, and parotha, and Samir, Emily and I finally got some ice cream. By 10, we were on the road home.
-Alex
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