The Longest Day Ever

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It is only 5pm, but this has been the longest day on record. There is surely some role for heat in relativity, as time goes really slowly here. Anyway, I got a tour of the hospital, met my supervisor and got my translator.

The hopital is pretty intense. First off, it's huge, and depending on where you draw your lines, it's a roughly 2000 bed facility, with about 4500 outpatients a day. Compare this to the MUHC superhospital's 800-900 beds and you see how massive this is. It's a total campus, and nothing less. The story behind the hospital is pretty interesting. Ida Scudder was visiting her missionary parents in India at the age of 18. One night, 3 men came to her seperately begging her to help their wives who were dying in childbirth. She couldn't do anything, and they refused the help of her father, a doctor, because custom dictates that a man can't deliver a baby. All three women died. The next day, Ida Scudder decided to go back to the US to study medicine. She was one of the first female graduates at Cornell, came back to India, and founded this hospital. It started as a one-bed affair, and is now this. Pretty interesting.

The hospital itself is like an airport in terms of how busy it is. There are a zillion people coming and going, waiting, sleeping and whatever else. It's as comprehensive and advanced as you could want a hospital to be, and a rather large chunk of their patients come from outside the state, let alone outside the city itself. Obviously, a 400,000 person city can't fill a hospital with that capacity.

I then went to meet Dr. KR John, who manages the TB control operations for the hospital. He's quite a nice and gentle man, and he took a big interest in the whole Iraqi Jew thing. He's really, really busy, and I always find it interesting to se someone act as a node in the social network, with people streaming into his office to ask questions, get forms signed, report on patient consultations, and all this while he answers emails, phone calls and manages to talk to me and hire somebody in the span of 20 mintues. He also ate lunch. It's really impressive.

So, as for the hiring bit. I have been cupled with Veejay, a student in health administration here (I think) who will help me as my translator. I am really surprised by how dilligent and competent she portrays herself to be. I don't expect the real thing to be any less. She just seems so on the ball, and really exceeds my expectations of her in outlining her expectations for herself. It's hard to explain, but it's a bit of a surprise to have someone raise the bar for themselves higher than you would have expected. I guess in this case I expected a worst-case scenario, where I have to settle for a translator in terms of both ability and work ethic. I'm not sure, but she might have given me homework. Not really, but in a small way yes.

So thus the day ends. I have made a lot of progress but also nearly none. Such is the nature of initial stages. I guess the next week will really chart things out and decide how feasible and doeable the project is, from the perspective of doing it comfortably. Veejay mentioned that she wanted to visit the Tsunami affected areas where she's from, and without getting either of our hopes too high, I'd like to be able to work that in somehow. I'm not averse to travel, and I think it could be a bit of an adventure.

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