The Hospital

So today I went to meet Dr. Mahesh, my sponsor for the research I will be doing in a couple of weeks, and we had a great conversation on tuberculosis and the guidelines that pertain to its treatment.  On some things we agreed, on others we did not, but the one striking thing was that I realized that no matter how hard you try to take your mind out of the western centric perspective of a disease, there is no match to talking to someone who deals with it on a daily basis and knows the foibles of its treatment and the arbitrary nature of treatment guidelines.  You hope against all hope that the people making the guidelines have the research and the expertise to make these huge decisions, but sometimes that falls short and everyone has to deal with its consequences.  That is the double edge of guidelines; they are a way to standardize standard of care, to level the playing field in a sense, but if they fall short they can do untold damage to patients whose doctors follow the guidelines without question.  On the other hand doctors who do not follow guidelines because it is not the way they where taught can fall behind the times and not give their patients the care they deserve.  So the physician must make his or her own informed decision, and be taught to investigate and evaluate all guidelines for merit.

But enough with the dissertation; today was great but we came back too late to go out with the mobile van, and tomorrow I have to get some paperwork done for IRB so I have to wait until friday to really start my internship.  Julien's going out tomorrow though so he'll report back.

Here's the three of us in the back of a auto rickshaw, now imagine five school girls instead. (It's pretty impressive how many people can fit in these)

The small person in bright orange leggings is me, in the back is a section of the new J.S.S. hospital. (Looks more like a palace right?)