Over my one week at home for winter break I ran into Sam Carter, who I went to middle school with. We discovered that we both would be in Andhra Pradesh in January and decided that the coincidence was too good of an opportunity to ignore. Next thing I knew, I was heading to Khammam—about a four-hour train ride from Hyderabad—last Tuesday. I stepped off the train at Khammam and an hour later I was standing in scrubs, a hair net, and facemask in an O.R. watching the end of a thyroid surgery. I came to Khammam to see the mission hospital that Sam had been volunteering at, but I didn’t expect to see quite so much. Over the course of the day I observed the thyroid surgery, an abdominal hysterectomy, a vaginal hysterectomy, a hemorrhoid removal, a polyp removal, and a scope being put into a woman’s bladder. I actually scrubbed in for the abdominal hysterectomy, but I quickly discovered that standing over a women who was having her abdomen cut open was very different than dissecting a frog in bio class; I spent the rest of that surgery sitting on a stool where I couldn’t actually see the scalpel cutting through her flesh. I wasn’t planning on becoming a doctor, but now I definitely can cross it off my list of possible professions.
St. Mary’s Mission Hospital was originally built in the 1880s by the British, and so isn’t exactly what you would see back in the U.S. Reverend John Mark and Dr. George have been running a clinic there for 13 years now, and they do all they can to treat as many patients as possible during the short period that a group of American surgeons come over from the U.S. I have absolutely no medical background, but from what I could tell, the doctors were making the most of the bare minimum of supplies that were available to them. The patients range from children that had been burned to young men and women who looked like they could be grandparents to elderly tribal people with no gray hairs on their heads. None of these people would be able to afford their surgeries without this hospital. My experience was eye opening. I was both disturbed by the reasons that these people needed medical attention and in awe of the incredible impact the doctors were having on the patients’ quality of life. Though I only dropped in for one day everyone—the pastor, the doctors and nurses, Sam, and the two girls I met at the polio clinic, Hemma and Devi—was welcoming, kind and compassionate. For me, it was one of those "only in India" experiences: where else would I be able to show up out of the blue and witness such intense medical procedures with no preliminaries other than the word of a kid the was in my 7th grade English class? I missed two days of class, but for one of the most unique days I’ve ever experienced.
St. Mary’s Mission Hospital was originally built in the 1880s by the British, and so isn’t exactly what you would see back in the U.S. Reverend John Mark and Dr. George have been running a clinic there for 13 years now, and they do all they can to treat as many patients as possible during the short period that a group of American surgeons come over from the U.S. I have absolutely no medical background, but from what I could tell, the doctors were making the most of the bare minimum of supplies that were available to them. The patients range from children that had been burned to young men and women who looked like they could be grandparents to elderly tribal people with no gray hairs on their heads. None of these people would be able to afford their surgeries without this hospital. My experience was eye opening. I was both disturbed by the reasons that these people needed medical attention and in awe of the incredible impact the doctors were having on the patients’ quality of life. Though I only dropped in for one day everyone—the pastor, the doctors and nurses, Sam, and the two girls I met at the polio clinic, Hemma and Devi—was welcoming, kind and compassionate. For me, it was one of those "only in India" experiences: where else would I be able to show up out of the blue and witness such intense medical procedures with no preliminaries other than the word of a kid the was in my 7th grade English class? I missed two days of class, but for one of the most unique days I’ve ever experienced.
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