Queen of the Hills - Mussoorie

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Queen of the Hills, Mussoorie, 2,003 m (~6,600 ft) high. Beautiful, a bit touristy, great views, but most importantly to me right now, the weather here is actually COOL! Believe it or not, I actually need BLANKETS at night!! It's amazing, and such an great, great relief from the incredible humidity and sweat-drenching heat of DehraDun.

Here we're working at Landour Community Hospital, part of the Emmanuel Hospital Association (and is therefore Christian). It's a 35 bed hospital situated pretty high up on the mountain, and treats people from the city as well as a good 200 or so of the surrounding villages! It's not very big - right now there are only 3 full-time doctors, one 1/2 time (she's recovering from some intensive chemo and radiation therapy), a physiotherapist, and maybe 10 nurses. The doctors here are great, though. The head doctor is Dr. Sam Thomas, who is pretty much a Renaissance man of medicine. He does adults, children, and general surgery. Pretty much the only thing I haven't seen him do so far is OB/GYN which is handled by his wife, Dr. Helen (an amazing, *wonderful* woman), or anything really specialized like orthopedic surgery or something. The other two doctors are more or less the equivalent of residents in the States. One has been here for about 3 years, and another just got here 3 months ago.

One of the best things here is how laid back everything is. In the mornings we get up around 7 AM or so to grab breakfast at 7:30 AM, and then there are morning services which most of the staff attends. I went the first morning we got here, but haven't been after since it was all in Hindi. Really interesting to hear Psalms sung in Hindi with a guy beating drums to it in the background. I'm also not sure, but I wonder if the tune they sang it to might have been slightly different as well, or if it only felt that way because of the language and music differences. Service is 8:00 - 8:30, and then we do rounds. Then we have tea (Chai! Mmmmm... Really, I don't think I'll ever get tired of the stuff, even though we drink it pretty much 6 times a day =) ), and outpatient clinic (OPD) starts at 11:00 AM. Recently I've been helping Dr. Helen, who's just great at explaining things, getting you involved, and really making you feel like you're helping her out. Most cool was today, when I got to watch a delivery! It was absolutely amazing.... it was the woman's 3rd, so it probably went a lot faster than for someone on her primary, but it was just... amazing. The head came right out, they aspirated him, and then the body just slipped right out! I swear, from the crowning of the head to the coming of the feet it probably only took a good 45 seconds at most! Then there was the winding of the umbilical cord around scissors to help pull it out, and then the placenta. People have told me that it's the most disgusting thing they've ever seen in their entire lives, but honestly it didn't seem that bad to me. Anyway, there was a lot more blood than I expected. I realize there are some non-medical people here so I won't go into more details but... uh... wow. (P.S. Everyone go and thank your moms right now for what they went through for you! Not even the birth but afterwards when they were checking the membranes and all that - I swear the woman was in more pain from that than the actual delivery! She was literally begging the nurse to stop...)

OPD runs until 1:00, when there's lunch (every meal here is rice, lentils, some sort of spicy veggie, and then some sort of bread. Always good (to me, anyway, some of my rotation-mates keep complaining about the food in India...)), and then surgeries start at 2:00 every day. Usually there's at least one, though sometimes there can be up to 3 in a row (all done by Dr. Thomas, poor guy!!). The other day I got to watch a vaginal hysterectomy, which was pretty cool. The woman had a prolapsed uterus and so it had to be removed. Honestly, the uterus is *not* very big! I can't imagine how it manages to stretch to what must be a good 30X it's size to accommodate a baby!!

After the surgeries (or before, or during, if they're running too long) at about 3:30 is afternoon rounds, and dinner is at 7:30 (more rice, lentils, some sort of spicy veg, and bread... - only once they had chicken. Only, it wasn't like any chicken I've ever had before. Couldn't recognize a single leg, thigh, or breast in there!!). They're so chill here, though. We really don't have to do anything we don't want to. I'm pretty sure we could just go trekking all day long and no one would say anything. =P

The housing here is quite an adventure. There wasn't any room left in the hospital, so they put us up in this sort of cabin-thing right next door, only it's just us 3 girls together (the boys are in the hospital) and for the past 2 days we've been without water. Anyone really squeamish about bugs or cleanliness definitely wouldn't make it here, either. The other night Amber lifted up the curtain, screamed, and jumped onto her chair. Turns out there was a lovely 2 inch black spider sitting on the wall, just hanging out. Wouldn't die, either... I swear it took me a good 6 smacks with Amber's shoe to really get it to give up. I usually let spiders live since they eat all the bugs, but I really wasn't relishing the idea of this thing coming down on me in the middle of the night... especially as they say people eat an average of 3 spiders in their lifetime while they sleep anyway. =P

Anyway, I think that's enough of a blog for now. This weekend I might be going to Agra to see the Taj Majal with Jean and some other people, only it's a good 9 - 12 hour (different stories) bus ride away from DehraDun, so we'll have to see... I think Mussorie is definitely a place I'll come back to in my last 2 weeks, though, when I get to choose my rotations. I love the doctors here, even if the town is really rather touristy.

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