Famous in a Small Town

Today was super busy. We started our morning off with a large breakfast consisting of lots of fruit, toast and eggs. We all needed to do a little bit more shopping so we went to a big department store called Sartha’s and to some surrounding shops. Ali and I went there the first weekend after we saw Rock Fort, but the other two hadn’t been so it was fun to take them. Once again we all bought a ton of stuff at hardly any cost. Gifts for everyone! For lunch we decided to try a restaurant that we drive by every day called Arab Spice. The food was delicious! We all ordered something different to share, including the traditional Indian drink, Lassi. We were told we needed to try one, so I’m glad we finally had the chance.  It pretty much tasted like very sweet melted yogurt. We also got a bread basket which consisted of a ton of different Indian breads, probably the best decision we could have made. The bread was amazing. I hate that I can’t bring fresh bread home for everyone to try.

 

Here's a picture of Lassi. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures while we were eating a Spice, so this one is from the internet.

 

After Spice, we were taken to a rural village that Bishop Heber helps take care of. They provide the people with healthcare, an education, agriculture, and fix up their village to make it a nicer place to live. We were given a nice tour by Ravi who once lived there. As soon as we showed up, everyone flocked to our car. We felt kind of famous. The children in the village absolutely adored us and wanted their pictures taken. The same 2 little boys wanted to be in every single picture we took, so that made it a little difficult. Every step we took it was either “What’s your name?” or “Picture”. That might be some of the only English they knew, but they knew it pretty well. We went into a couple houses to see what the typical Indian home looks like. Each house consisted of one room where eating, sleeping, cooking, socializing, pretty much everything occurs.

Here’s a picture of Dawn trying to go through a door. The door frames were very small because as you probably know the average height of an Indian is much less than that of an American. .

It was very hard to get candid shots because once the kids knew we were taking a picture of someone, they had to run and get in. This little girl was super cute playing with her paper and pencil, unfortunately this is the best picture I could get.

This was their main water source. The women fill up their buckets here and carry it back to their homes.

Here a woman was cooking dinner outside of her house. Typically we saw the stoves in the homes.

If the family had a bed, this is what it looked like. Sadly we did not see many beds.

The next 3 pictures were taken inside the home. The house was one big room where everything took place.

This is from the inside of the house. These kids, plus the four of us was about all that could fit in the house.

I just thought this little boy was adorable playing with his candy.

This is 3 of the trouble makers who had to get into every picture.

We then came back to the Hostel, enjoyed a nice little dinner and sat around and watched Little Miss Sunshine. We had a nice relaxing evening after such a busy day.

The Underserved

Tonight I got to experience how personal dental hygiene in India is nowhere near what it is in the US. A woman came into the office because she had a tooth ache. She opened her mouth and every single one of her teeth had large amounts of decay. The dentist was able to extract the tooth that was giving her the most pain, which was nice. I then asked her what she was going to do about the rest of the teeth, to which I got the reply “Nothing, she can’t afford it.  I would have to do a root canal on every single tooth in her mouth.” It broke my heart to think that this woman knows she is going to slowly lose every tooth in her mouth and it all could have been prevented with proper dental care.

Not long after this woman came in, a 9 year old girl arrives with a big spot on her neck, complaining of pain around the area. It appeared that she had so much decay on a tooth that an abscess has formed and is draining through her jaw bone and through her neck. Due to neither her nor her dad knowing how to speak Tamil or English, Dr. Priya was only able to prescribe her an antibiotic and send her on her way. She could not do any surgery without being informed about the girl’s medical history or without properly informing the family of the procedure needing to be done.

These two events have reminded me of exactly why I want to be a dentist. They have encouraged me to keep striving towards my goal to help the underserved and make a difference in these people’s lives.

Jal-Jeera, a One of a Kind Drink

We all got to experience some Indian culture first hand tonight at dinner. It all started yesterday when Solomon asked us what our favorite foods were. One of us said sweet potatoes, thinking you know, sweet potatoes. So tonight at dinner we sit down to a plate full of white boiled potatoes. Not remembering our conversation last night, we expect them to taste like normal salty potatoes. Not quite. Instead of giving us orange sweet potatoes they cooked normal potatoes in sugar water to sweeten them. Literally making sweet potatoes. Believe it or not they were actually pretty good and tasted just like sweet potatoes.

Not long after the sweet potato discovery we were presented with a green water with ground mint and pepper on top. We were told this was the Indian drink Jal-Jeera which aids in digestion. Curious, we all took a big gulp. It was interesting. Here is the wiki definition, please read for further explanation.

“Jal-jeera, or jaljira, is an Indian beverage, or else the powder used to flavor this drink. In Hindi, "Jal" means water and "Jeera" means cumin. The beverage form is essentially lemonade and jaljira powder, and is a popular summer drink in India. It is sometimes served as an appetizer, as it is intended to "startle" the taste buds.

Jaljira powder generally consists of cumin, ginger, black pepper, mint, black salt, some fruit powder (usually either mango, or some kind of citrus zest), and chili or hot pepper powder.”

When it says it is made to startle the taste buds, boy is that correct. I cannot upload a picture right now, the internet is not being friendly. So feel free to Google the drink yourself.

Today was very eventful at Dr. Gurucharan’s office. It was implant day! Apparently the staff enjoys days Dr. Gurucharan does implants because everyone seemed to be very chipper and happy this morning. I learned a ton about the jaw bone and size of the implant during the procedure. The procedure only took him about 20 minutes which I found to be very fascinating. I’m not sure if that is because he had a lot of other patients today so he was working quickly or if that is the legitimate time for an implant procedure. Whatever the case, the procedure was done and the patient was happy in the end.

A VERY Thorough Tour

 

Today we went on a little field trip. Our field trip consisted of a tour of Joseph Eye Hospital specializing in….eyes. They also have a section of the hospital focused on disability rehabilitation. We began our visit to Joseph Eye Hospital with a 15 minute chapel service that all employees attend in the morning. We then went on a very thorough 4 hour tour where we were showed everything in the hospital including, but not limited to the operation rooms, fire extinguishers, walkways, accounting offices, HR offices, patient and employee canteens, and disability friendly ramps. I think the only thing we were not shown were the toilets. Our very friendly tour guide introduced us to almost every employee of the hospital, except maybe the janitors, allowing us to see every department. The introductions even led us to get to enjoy a stock room full of lenses. He even had their blind patients show us that they’ve learned their way around the hospital and had one patient in rehabilitation walk around the room to show us she can now walk.

 

Joseph Eye Hospital is very top notch. They had modern accommodations, operating rooms, and sterilization. We were shown their processes for sterilization, feeding patients, and scrubbing in for an operation. There were three things I really enjoyed about this hospital: they self-employee their patients with disabilities, they will do procedures for free if the patient cannot afford it, and they care about patent care just as much as they do about medical care. Outside of the eye portion of the hospital they focus a lot on patients with disabilities, providing them with jobs and education. We were told that the disability patients are taught simple ways of life so when their family members pass, they can support themselves. They teach them by having them make cups, candles, chairs and tables, envelopes, and notebooks which they then sell in the hospital.

A disability patient selling snacks and products made at the hospital.

 

Here's us and our wondeful tour guide.

 

So today we got a new driver, apparently our other one is taking a month off for health reasons. Now, I wouldn’t normally include our new driver in my blog, but tonight it led to an adventure. Not only was it this new driver’s first day, he speaks little to no English. Tonight he graciously drove me to Dr. Priya’s office as told, which I find out upon arrival is closed. I tried to tell him her office was closed and to take me back to Bishop Heber which then led to us sitting on the side of the road for 10 minutes and him trying to drive me to a different hospital to observe. He could not grasp the concept that he took me to the correct place but she was not there. He gave up on our lack of communication skills and eventually called someone to translate. 20 minutes later I made it back safely to Bishop Heber College and our driver is now probably confused beyond belief.  The bright side is I learned how to communicate with our driver: two word sentences accompanied by hand motions.

Who Wants a Root Canal Treatment?

Well, not much has happened today. We are all very tired and still fighting off the never ending India illnesses. Tonight the cooks asked for specific meal requests and wanted to know what dishes were our favorite. I think we’re all pretty excited to see what food we have coming up the next few days. So far we know we’re getting French toast in the morning! The dentist offices are pretty routine, just A LOT of root canals, some extractions and many consultations. One thing I’ve found interesting while here is that root canal treatments and extractions are more common than fillings, unlike in the US where it appears to be the opposite. As Dr. Priya informed me, this is due to the lack of prevention, regular dental cleanings, and check-ups. Since we do these things in the US, typically we can catch decay before it gets to the point where we have to lose the tooth. Obviously, root canals and extraction happen in the US, I’ve just noticed they are more frequent in India. I have also noticed an abundance of infections in the gum. I can only assume this is due to the poor dental hygiene as well.

The Monkey Stole Our Breakfast

 

Yes, that monkey stole our breakfast!

So this weekend the four of us and Dr. Relton ventured to the lovely Nilgiris Mountains to visit the town Ooty. We left at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning and stopped for a wonderful Indian breakfast on the way. We were greeted at the Tamil Nadu Hotel by a swarm of monkeys. Monkeys used to be my second favorite animal, closely following dolphins, but now I’m a little terrified of them. They are super cute, as you can tell in the pictures, but if you have food they may…no will attack you. Allie stepped out of the car with a white plastic bag carrying some baked goods and within seconds a monkey grabbed for the bag. About 3 seconds after that happened we had the trunk of the car opened and the above monkey, while holding her baby, jumped in the trunk, grabbed our bag of bread, and took off running. Once the monkeys have their food, they don’t share. We proceeded to watch this monkey eat our whole bag of bread while her baby scared off the other monkeys.

By the way, I'm obsessed with the baby monkey in this picture. I would have taken it, but I don't think customs or my mom would like that too much.

 

After those adventures, we went on a lovely safari ride where we got to see a giant squirrel, spotted deer (which travel in HUGE packs), peacocks and some wild elephants. Not long after our safari ride, we went and watched the domesticated elephants be fed massive amounts of food. Apparently these elephants do not eat meet, which is something none of us knew.  Needless to say between three very Indian meals, a safari ride, being attacked by monkeys, and seeing elephants, we had one of the most Indian days we’ve had yet.

Today was a whole different story. We began our day with another safari ride which then led to eggs, toast and coffee for breakfast and then a trip to Ooty what we can only describe as The Pigeon Forge of India. Here we went on a boat ride, shopped, and ate at a local burger and fry joint. We then set for our journey home and ended with some delicious Domino’s Pizza. We had one super Indian day followed by your stereotypical American day. This was definitely the refreshing weekend we needed. Thanks Dr. Relton for making it happen!

I’ll let the pictures below describe some of the weekend.

You know, just hanging out with some elephants. No big deal.

 

Here's the elephant food before they smush it up into a big ball to feed to the elephants.

Apparently monkey's think they are human. Mr. Boss monkey was just hanging out on top of the car scoping everything out.

The villages are just posted up on the side of the mountain. None of us were able to get a good enough picture to really capture the magnitude of the mountains or the uniqueness of the villages.

Just out riding on the motor boat looking at the dock full of people.

 

 

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY TO THE MY WONDERFUL DAD AND STEP DAD!!!!

Sweet Tooth

Today was a very exciting day for me in the dentist office. I got to see a surgery again!! This time he removed a woman’s impacted 3^rd molar, a.k.a. wisdom tooth. Apparently here they do not remove the wisdom teeth very often, only when there is a serious problem. Sometimes it seems like in the US we remove them at the drop of a hat. It was exciting to finally see how they set up for a surgery. The dentist and patient both put on big bibs and everything is sterilized and laid out on a towel. The dentist insures that he washes his hands and puts on new gloves for surgery, which is wonderful since that does not always occur between patients.

Although the woman’s mouth was numbed, this procedure was still very painful for her. I now see why we generally put patients to sleep when undergoing wisdom tooth surgery. Although she was in a lot of pain, he had to keep pushing through so he could sew her gum back up quickly. I couldn’t understand what he was saying to her during the procedure, but I could tell he was encouraging her to keep going and that it was almost done. It made me happy to see her smile when it was all finished after all of the pain I had just seen her in.

Tomorrow morning bright and early we’re leaving for Ooty, so today three of us went to the local bakery and bought some breakfast for the road. Of course while there we had to try a piece of cake. It was only 15 Rupees, who could pass that up? The cake was delicious as expected, so now on top of our new favorite ice cream place, we now have a bakery to enjoy. Looks like we’ll be gaining weight instead of losing it on this trip.

This picture doesn't do the bakery justice, but here's some of the delicious cake