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Arriving at the theatre we went through the rigmarole of changing into the lovely scrubs provided. Consultants get nice clean green ones that seem to fit quite well. We, as scum medical students, get convict outfits.
We were watching a valve replacement operation, in which both the mitral and aortic valve were removed and replaced with artificial valves. We watched the anaesthetic end of things for a while then went on to watch the operation, which I hadn’t seen before. Whilst the surgeons were removing the pleura using diathermy (electrical cautery) I noticed that the heart went into ventricular fibrillation, I watched this for about 30 seconds and when no one responded I turned and asked one of the anaesthetists if this was normal. He said it was, about 30 seconds later the senior surgeon turned up to see how things were going and pointed out that the heart was in VF and something should be done rather quickly. The patient was cardioverted and went back into sinus rhythm. The rest of the operation proceeded uneventfully with the patient making a full recovery, albeit with two metal valves in place.
We arrived at the hospital and after waiting for 40 minutes or so in the principle’s secretary’s office we were finally ushered into the inner sanctum (actually down the hall). Dr Kashyap then admitted receiving one fax and one postal letter from us, despite his previous insistence that no communication from Australia was ever received. We then spent about 20 minutes going over what we wanted to do, when, for how long and why. It should be noted that each question was answered very quickly, it was the continuous repetition of the questions and the same answers that actually occupied the 20 minutes.
We were told that the head of aneas was not available and we should go across to the cardiothoracic vascular theatres for the mean time. Arriving at the theatres we had to put on scrubs that looked like they predated the monolithic period, so washed and stained were they. They were also sized to fit someone from the said period with an ideal stature of 140 cm, which meant they ended mid calf on me. Now I want you to consider that if you were to walk in to an operating theatre what kind of foot wear you’d like to put on; covered and water impermeable would be high on the list of answers. Wrong, the correct answer in India is rubber sandals, no toe coverage and certainly not very effective at preventing blood from coming in contact with an enclosed foot. However, that said entering the theatre was very comforting in many ways. There was advanced monitoring, everything you’d expect in a first word theatre. Certainly the ventilator wasn’t quite as advanced as what we have at RPA but it was close. It just didn’t support the advanced ventilation modes we have back at home.
After watching the start of the operation we bailed with excuses of a need to do shopping, which wasn’t that far from the truth. Before we left we were invited to see a surgery tomorrow, being Saturday we were a bit surprised but we were assured theatres in India ran on Saturday.
Use horn when
- Approaching blind corner
- Overtaking
- Turning
- Approaching pedestrians
- Driving on the wrong side of the road
- Driving through a green light (no I'm not kidding)
- Driving through a red light 8. Accelerating
- If not covered in the above list then apply horn anyway.
After missing the bus to Shimla at 0630 we caught one to Chandigarh then caught a bus to Shimla. It would be more precise to say we caught a bus for 30 metres and then were stuck in a bus strike for about 1.5 hours.
During the time we waited and during the subsequent journey a nice couple played some music from their laptop. It turns out that Indian music sounds no better when played really badly from cheap speakers than when inflicted from a good stereo system.
I thought riding on a bus from Delhi to Chanders was bad, that was a relatively wide road with over taking lanes. The road from Chanders to Shimla was anything but nice. A narrow road composed of one lane in either direction with cars, buses and trucks regularly overtaking each other on the wrong side of the road. Not only was the road narrow, it was sided with a cliff and a cliff. One rising to the heavens and the other falling down like the pits of kaz’hadum. I must confess I closed my eyes more than once and held my breath while we squeezed between a bus or truck and a cliff face. I don't think it made the bus any thinner but it didn't seem to do any harm either.
Mark and I arrived in India a bit late due to leaving late from Bangkok, though nothing to do with us. I just remember the longest taxi that I thought possible. If it were any longer we would have rolled all the way to India. Luckily we eventually took off.
On arrival I desparetly looked for a phone to call Khushboo from within side the terminal, unfortunately there appeared not to be one. We proceeded to wait for about an hour in immigration, apparently the arrival of some Afghanis was causing all the delays. During the long wait I sent Khushboo a couple of messages but didn't get any response.
Leaving through customs we noticed that the complaints email address was a hotmail one. Talk about official feeling. Just walking through the seething throng of people that were waiting for who knows who was very intimidating. I couldn't believe how many people there were. A veritable horde. My Uncle Naryna and Aunt Saraswethi spotted us and allowed us to use their mobile to call Khushboo who was waiting for us outside.
Khusbhoo's father took us on one of the most nerve wracking drives (only one of the most because I've been on a bus in India, more of that later). From watching him drive I've come to the conclusion that road rules are more vague suggestions than anything binding. This idea was developed as I hung on with a death grip to the door handle as we tore through red lights, only using our horn to convince people that we really did have right of way.
I'm currently getting ready to go India, I've written a list of things that I have to do and have managed to get exactly one thing ticked off so far. Well maybe a few more than one, but not too many more, 4 or 5 more.
My floor of my room is covered with crap of things that I need. I can't believe I'm going to reduce all my existence to a couple of piles of clothes and some technology.
I have no reason why I'm using a blog rather than using my traditional mass emails. My only excuse is that everyone else seems to have a blog. I had to look up some to work out what they are, just webpages that people write their thoughts on and hope that other people care. Maybe it's therapeutic but I really don't care.
Read on if you want, don't if you don't.
