Today was my first day at Schell Eye Hospital and it was fabulous to be doing ophthalmology. I worked the whole day with Dr. Zia Sultan Pradhan (but she wouldn't let me call her Dr. Pradhan, only Zia). She was one year out of residency, very smart, sweet and quite sassy I learned from listening and watching her shoo out patients who wandered into the exam room out of their turn (see "Cutting" in "Everyday India"). I have gotten used to the teaching methods here in which attendings (called consultants) constantly pepper medical students and residents (registrars) with questions to assess their knowledge, and Zia was no exception. She was happy that I had some background in ophthalmology already and that I had matched for residency, so she was very excited to teach and let me examine each patient after she was done with the slit lamp and the indirect, asking me to describe the findings I saw and draw them out for her on paper. It felt surprisingly comforting using the slit lamp because it was a constant in medicine between here and home.
We saw many interesting cases throughout the day, many of which were simple cases that we would see back home and some more exotic. Ocular trauma is extremely prevalent here due to the high number of manual laborers in India, and patients have many complications from such accidents. The worst was a 14-year-old boy losing his vision due to angle recession glaucoma caused by blunt trauma while helping his father farm. However, there were many happy patients just there for follow-up on surgeries or routine eye care. It was very exciting to see my specialty in action here in India, and I am so happy that I have chosen a specialty that can make such significant and lasting impacts on people's lives if I come to perform surgeries on international trips in residency and in the future.
I realized that Zia also shares my love for the awesome equipment of ophthalmology when she showed off their fancy photo suite in the back of the eye clinic as well as her new retinoscope that cost her 14,500 rupees.
"Getting new tools is so fun." She said. "Except for your checkbook."
Tomorrow is surgery day at Schell, and I'm looking forward to it! We offered to wear our own scrubs from home, but because ours have short shirts instead of the long tunic-like ones that the women wear here, we were told to just wear theirs. I have become accustomed to being so conservatively-dressed all the time here, but was surprised that this even carried over to the operating room.
Tonight we go to celebrate Cristine's birthday with dinner at Darling's (of course) and a birthday cake that Julie and I picked up from a bakery. The best part is the "candle" I found. It's an enormous plastic flower with candles inside that when you light them, cause the flower petals to open while simultaneously playing music. It's going to be exciting, especially if Darling's goes up in flames...:)
We saw many interesting cases throughout the day, many of which were simple cases that we would see back home and some more exotic. Ocular trauma is extremely prevalent here due to the high number of manual laborers in India, and patients have many complications from such accidents. The worst was a 14-year-old boy losing his vision due to angle recession glaucoma caused by blunt trauma while helping his father farm. However, there were many happy patients just there for follow-up on surgeries or routine eye care. It was very exciting to see my specialty in action here in India, and I am so happy that I have chosen a specialty that can make such significant and lasting impacts on people's lives if I come to perform surgeries on international trips in residency and in the future.
I realized that Zia also shares my love for the awesome equipment of ophthalmology when she showed off their fancy photo suite in the back of the eye clinic as well as her new retinoscope that cost her 14,500 rupees.
"Getting new tools is so fun." She said. "Except for your checkbook."
Tomorrow is surgery day at Schell, and I'm looking forward to it! We offered to wear our own scrubs from home, but because ours have short shirts instead of the long tunic-like ones that the women wear here, we were told to just wear theirs. I have become accustomed to being so conservatively-dressed all the time here, but was surprised that this even carried over to the operating room.
Tonight we go to celebrate Cristine's birthday with dinner at Darling's (of course) and a birthday cake that Julie and I picked up from a bakery. The best part is the "candle" I found. It's an enormous plastic flower with candles inside that when you light them, cause the flower petals to open while simultaneously playing music. It's going to be exciting, especially if Darling's goes up in flames...:)
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