Last week in Mumbai...

First of all, here's a pic of Jesse and me in the Ajanta caves. Good times!

So, I'm nearing the end of my Mumbai experience. We leave on Saturday morning at 6am for Delhi, and following that we'll be all over the place for 2 1/2 weeks, visiting Agra (the Taj Mahal), Jaipur, Shimla, and either Dharamsala, Manali, or Rishikesh. Mumbai has been a great experience, but I'm looking forward to moving on from here and checking out more of what India has to offer. I think I've done a pretty good job of taking advantage of the experience here, and I feel like it's been an amazing and eye-opening couple of weeks. Somehow over the last few weeks I've gotten quite used to the insanity of Mumbai. Jesse and I were discussing earlier that riding in a rickshaw doesn't even faze us anymore, whereas during the first few days we were constantly fearing for our lives. It's probably going to be a bit weird returning home, where you're not constantly being bombarded with noise, beggars, merchants, and the overwhelming smell of trash, car fumes, and shit. Yes, I know, I'm probably not the best candidate for the job of Bombay Tourism Director, but whatever, this is the reality. It's pretty crazy that people grow up here and know nothing else. I guess one of the things that this trip has already done for me has been to make me realize how lucky I really am to have been born in the US. Too bad we can't cheer for them in the World Cup anymore. Let's go Ghana, I guess!

Anyway, our clinical rotation during the last week is at V.N. Desai Hospital in the Santacruz neighborhood. Out of all the places we've been, this is definitely the most ghetto. It's a government hospital, and most of the patients that come in are from the slums...keep in mind that these are not slums like we have at home. These people basically live on the street, but there are so many of them that they're just big "homeless neighborhoods." Most of the homes are nothing more than a tarp over an area of concrete, sometimes with a tin roof, sometimes not. They're often situated right next to malarial swamps, and there are no real public health initiatives, etc. So this is the population that comes to V.N. Desai. Yesterday, Justin and I were in the orthopedics outpatient department, and after that we went on rounds with a few docs in the ortho ward. Many of the patients have bad fractures, etc., and they often get infected because of poor hygiene (and I also suspect that a lot of the infections are hospital-borne, since the place is pretty dirty). It was very cool, and the docs were nice. They pimped us a bit, and we basically know nothing, but that's ok, we're learning all the time. Last night we went to a community clinic near Andheri, which ended up being pretty good. The doctor saw about 20 patients while we were there, which was only about 2 hours. He would bring in 3 or 4 patients at a time, and he'd sort of treat them all simultaneously. Then they'd leave and 4 more would roll in. He was very good about teaching us, so we definitely learned a lot. We returned to V.N. Desai this morning, where we rotated through pediatrics. We got to go into the NICU, which was amazingly clean and full of expensive machines, etc., which is quite a contrast from the rest of the hospital. It was incredible to see such an impressive NICU in such an otherwise sketchy setting. Most of the patients that we saw in the peds outpatient clinic and on the wards had respiratory or GI problems, which are all very common here, especially during the monsoon.

So that basically brings us up to date....we are debating whether we'll go back to clinic tonight. We might watch the Brazil game instead. I think this afternoon we may go see a Bollywood film, as I think that's kind of a must-do in Mumbai. More fun times!