Thinking

(I'm sorry, goodbye, see you soon.)

I leave to go to Nantes, France tomorrow, where I'll be studying until December.

And all I can think about is how I don't really speak French, but that maybe? With a little extra wine? The language will just flow.

Yeah. That's what I'm banking on.

Thinking

I've been home from Nepal for almost a month and half now, and I haven't really accomplished anything. In the time since being home, I have:

1. Built a box out of styrofoam, and called it: 'Research.'

2. Made a large vat of bio-diesel and called it: 'Research.'

3. Rock climbed a lot in Rocky Mountain National Park.

4. Been visited by Megan Ratliff, the volunteer I did my rounds with at Helping Hands in Nepal.

Megan stayed in Nepal for 2 weeks after I came home. Once she was settled back at home in Arizona, she took a quick flight to Colorado to visit me, which, needless to say, was amazing.

But now she's gone, and I have quickly reverted back to my continual state of doing nothing. All this time, and I still haven't managed to write a blog post about my last day in Nepal, when we visisted an orphanage.

Or teach myself Calculus. Still haven't moved on to that one yet.

Last Day at Helping Hands

Originally uploaded by ruth.e.campbell

The last day at Helping Hands was like any other day. Megan, Joyce and I arrived at the hospital around 11, and headed straight towards Dr. Gupta's office. Per usual, Gupta was no where to be found, so we killed time by going to the ER.

When we arrived in the ER, there was a younger doctor on duty--one we had never seen before. Like all the other young doctors, he ignored us until we forced him to talk to us by asking annoying questions about the patients. There were only a few patients in the ER at the time, and one of them was a sickly, older woman who had traveled from the villages to get help. After a bit of prodding, the doctor brought us to the woman, and showed us how to do a full physical.

The woman was anemic, and was very malnourished. He showed us how to examine her entire body, starting with the eyes and fingertips, all the way to her breasts, abdomen, and toes. Her fingers were clubbed and stained (she was a chronic smoker), and her skin was coated in a thick layer of dirt. He stripped her, and showed us her chest (her breasts were barely there) and had us count all of her ribs. We spent a full hour with the woman, just doing one physical, but we learned more in that hour, than we had in the week we had spent being ignored by the other doctors.

Afterwards, we found doctor Gupta and sat on his examination table, while he saw patient after patient in his tiny room. Nate eventually joined us, and after lunch, we learned that there was a surgery on a hydrocele. A hydrocele is when a sack, surrounding the testicle, fills with fluid, causing the scrotum to swell. The surgery involves cutting open the scrotum and the sack, draining the fluid, reversing the sack (so that it won't fill again), putting it back in the scrotum, and sewing it back up.

Nate, Joyce and I went to it, while Megan went home to sleep. Once we scrubbed in, the nurses offered us tea and cookies, and we got to talking with the head surgeon and the anesthesiologist. They told us about the surgeries they do, the complications, and how difficult it is to be a doctor. They even offered to let Joyce and Nate assist in surgery after they are there for a few months. We finished our tea, went into the OT, and watched on as the surgeon cut open the sack and fluid sprayed out onto his face and clothes. But a successful surgery, nonetheless.

As I was leaving, the surgeon, who had never really talked to me before, took my hands, bowed to me and told me that the hospital would miss me greatly. I'd be lying if I said I didn't tear up a bit.

Thinking

It finally rained in Kathmandu. Now we can use more than just one bucket of water to bathe!

Thinking

I have eaten 8 billion Jelly Belly's in the past day. Soooo nauseous.

Blood

The past few days, Megan, Joyce and I have been on rotation in the Gynae Ward. On Monday, we spent the morning looking at cervix infections, yeast infections and pregnant mothers until the gynocologist invited us to follow her to the post-natal ward. Two mothers had given birth earlier that morning, and she was going to check on them.

She walked up to the first woman, directed her to spread her legs, snapped on a glove, and started poking around inside the woman. After a few seconds, she started scooping out large chunks of membrane and placenta, which spilled out onto the bed and ground. The four other patients and their families crowded around and watched, as she finished pulling out the remaning membrane, and then moved on to the next patient.

After finishing in the ward, we went back down to meet with other patients. A girl, about 15 yrs. old, came in with her friends and boyfriend, and discovered that she was pregnant. Without even considering it, she immediately signed the sheets and paid for the abortion. So, Megan, Joyce and I watched another abortion, and then went to lunch.

After lunch, we went into the ER, and immediately ran into a woman with a heart rate of 243 and climbing. The other interns were in there, watching on as four doctors and tons of nurses ran about, injecting her with Adenine and Verapamil, and trying to check her blood pressure (almost non-existent.) The woman's heart rate peaked at 300, but after a few minutes on the drugs, her heart rate dropped to almost completely normal.

Pokhara, the novel.

On Thursday afternoon, five of us (Megan, Joyce, Nate, Amanda, and I) decided to go to Pokhara, Nepal. To get to Pokhara, one takes the same rickety bus down the same terrifyingly steep road out of Kathmandu, as if one were heading towards Chitwan. However, this trip is different, as it heads more west instead of south, and climbs higher into the mountains, instead of going into flat lands.

Pokhara is a small town located in the foothills of the Annapurna mountain range. On a good day, you can see many of the famous mountains, but more often than not, it's too cloudy to see a single peak (while we were there, we only briefly glimpsed Macchapucchre.) Besides the mountains, Pokhara is idyllic--the town is hidden away in the hills, and centered around a large, clear freshwater lake. In the middle of the lake is a small island, upon which a Buddhist temple is located, and perched on top of a hill, overlooking the lake is the World Peace Pagoda.

When we arrived in Pokhara on Friday afternoon, after a long, dusty and bumpy ride, we met up with two other interns, Carly and Melissa, who had stayed with us in Kathmandu a few days prior. They had been moved to Sarangkot, a little village on a hill above Pokhara, to work in the health clinic there, and were waiting in Pokhara to be moved to their homestay. After dropping off our bags, we immediately headed for the town to eat dinner, and then to the lake.

Some of the best Western food I've ever eaten in Nepal came from this one restaurant in Pokhara. In Nepal, if you want good food, your best bet is to order Nepali food, but often, places trying to cater to tourists will attempt to make Western food (note: not always a good end result.) But this place was so good, we actually didn't eat anywhere else the entire time we were there. After dinner, we grabbed Pringles, Pepsi, and whiskey, rented a boat and made it onto the lake in time for the sunset, which, I sure you can guess, was spectacular.

After we returned the boat, we wandered back to our hotel room (which was called 'the dormitory' because it was actually just three barren bunk beds), told stories and played games until one of us puked (they actually puked into my hands), one of us cried, and all of us fell asleep with no pants on.

The next day we woke up late, ate an amazing breakfast at our favorite restaurant, and immediately rented another boat. Carly had been feeling fairly nauseous after a rough bout with ED (or, explosive diarrhea) and this morning, she decided to sleep in.

Note: The moment we had arrived in Pokhara, Carly had started pushing the idea of staying later and trekking for four days in the Annapurna range, which none of us were expecting to do, or were prepared to do. Most people didn't want to go, and the idea of trekking with her feeling ill, and the rest of us also having bowel movements the consistency of water, was constantly on the back of my mind during the trip. Ignoring everyone else, she displayed how intent she was on doing it by yelling through the bathroom door to us about just, 'how awesome it would be.'

So while Carly was recovering (to make sure she could trek), we rented a boat and fishing rods, and headed out to a small cove across the lake. The poles were a mess, so we forgot them, stripped down to our undies, and dove into the water. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon swimming and climbing onto thick trees that hung out across the water so that we could dive in. Seriously, picturesque.

We dropped off the boat and picked up Carly, and wandered into town to do some serious shopping, which turned out to be quite fruitful ($56 North Face Jacket? Don't mind if I do!) We ate another great dinner, and then watched a cultural dance. At the cultural dance, we met another Canadian man, and Englishman, and a few drunk Nepalis. They wandered from touristy bar to touristy bar with us, telling us about how they too were interns, and they'd been living in Nepal for over 7 months. While we hadn't had much to drink, we were a smaller group of females (Carly had to run off to the squatter again) with a bunch of overeager men. And so Nate took care of us.

The next morning we awoke to Carly sitting on our beds, telling us that she was really, really sorry, but she just didn't think she could go on the trek. Nobody was too heartbroken. Instead, we decided to hike the two hours to the Peace Pagoda, which would be difficult, as it was 7:30, we still had no pants on, and she had to be back by 10 am to go to Sarangkot. We quickly got across the lake and started the hike at 8:40, and managed to make it to the Pagoda by 9:20 in what was probably one of the most intense and miserable hikes of my life.

Pokhara, like Chitwan, is very hot and very humid. The hills are covered in rainforests. But it is still at an incredible elevation. I hike a lot, but I have never sweat so much, and felt so out of breath in my life. I can't even imagine what those people taking pictures must have thought as I dragged my completely drenched self up to this pure, clean, white pagoda with this massive gold Buddha, trying not to simultaneously vomit and poop everywhere. I know they laughed. After a few minutes, Carly made her way up to me and said, "Maybe it's good we didn't trek--I feel like my water just burst."

We literally spent five minutes on top, took two pictures, and ran all the way down, where we caught a boat and made it back to the hotel by 10:15. The girls left for Sarangkot, while the rest of us hopped on a local microbus headed back to Kathmandu. The ride was wonderful, cheap, clean and fast. They even played Nepali pop music the entire way.