Lunging around my large trolley suitcase, a big duffle bag, and a backpack clad with an induction stove, a portable juicer, egg boiler, laptop,tea boxes, ready to eats, and the quintessentials of cosmopolitan life, I quite dreadfully alighted my bus and unloaded my over-packed luggage at Kaiwara, a small village in Chikballapur district of Karnataka state. I could sense the driver of the bus was giving me judgmental looks for it seemed like I was packed for a famine. At Kaiwara, you have the option of living in the beautiful ashram that is the centerpiece of tourism here, but this time, we were allotted rooms in a specific hostel for doctors. In my second year of med school, we had rooms in the ashram and I'd found it to be a serene environment away from the bustle of commercialization and since that way you live close to the ashram kitchen that serves meals four times a day, it is a clear win-win situation to live there. I was excited for these two weeks that stood in front of me. It was going to be challenging for it meant being away from the comfort of civilization. We as city dwellers are intertwined with the comfort of technology and when your food delivery apps states " sorry, we don't serve your location yet", it brings out a pit in your stomach and you want to run back to home, sweet home. Our days typically began with field visits which I thoroughly enjoyed. These meant going from house to house in a specific village, and filling out a survey book that check-listed important medical information such as antenatal care, vaccination for pediatric age group, tuberculosis symptoms, fever symptoms, and sanitation. I believe there is no work that is insignificant in the medical profession, and even little things such as these are important since they reflect if the government healthcare schemes such as ASHA workers are working efficiently in these small coups of population. If nobody does it, these could go unaccounted for since these people are the poorest of the poor and do not have the privilege of voicing out their concerns.
I sat on this rock in silence for ten minutes and became mindful of the life here. The villagers have a simple routine that is so close to mother nature, unlike ours. Their day to day life revolves around working around plants, animals and their families, while we work around computers and cars.They wake up, work in the farm, bathe their cows and goats, cook using the produce of their own fields, and live close to their children and elders. Their needs are simple and they are truly rich in their own way as they are so content. Villages are so small that the population is close and neighbors have your back just like family. They eat produce grown on their own land, milk from their own cows, eggs from their own poultry. This way, they are closely knit to nature and their loved ones. The air that I was breathing was so fresh unlike the smoke laden air that I'm used to and sitting in silence, I could hear the sound of at-least ten different birds and animals at the same moment.
If this is how mornings here looked, afternoons were meant for working out of the primary health center ( PHC) here. If the medical officer was on field visits, we could attend to patients first hand. Since it is a very small set-up, it does not hold the spectrum of medication needed to cater to all the diseases of the population, but you do have useful medication to work around with such as standard drugs- paracetamol, ibuprofen, omez, domperidone, diclofenac, metformin, ORS to name a few. There is a different form of satisfaction in attending to the simple village folk who would sit in total surrender in front of you- their "doctoramma" as they lovingly address you, and they thank you -tremendously with joined hands. In one of the pediatric patients, we were fortunate to catch a heart murmur whom we referred for detailed scan at a higher center. This restored my faith that indeed the work we were doing was important if we executed it with sincerity. The highlight of my time here was getting to witness a delivery conducted solely by a community nurse with just the very basic medicines at disposal. Having studied and worked in modern hospitals that carry everything from scans, to IV lines, medications, sterilization kits, this was a unique experience. The lady was wheeled in just at the instant that her water broke. Episiotomy was conducted with a normal sterile blade ( not episiotomy scissors) without any local anesthetia, and labor proceeded much more easily than I'd ever witnessed. The baby cried immediately at birth, and the placenta separated without any delay. The uterus went back to it's position and there was no excessive blood loss. Lactation occurred , and the baby was sleeping peacefully. There was no need for continuous labor monitoring, IV fluids, blood, or anything too special. The nurse skillfully stitched the episiotomy cut in three layers. I was awestruck by the ease of it all.
I am writing out this piece from my house in Bangalore where I've come for the weekend, but I go back to Kaiwara tomorrow as it's the beginning of Pulse Polio Programme, so I'm very excited for it and will share extensively about it in my next post .
