Wednesday Jan 7th

The hostel I am staying at has the tradition of going to a restaurant every Wednesday night after we pay our rent, so I just got back from there just a little while ago. It was delicious and we only spent 5 American dollars! It is a great place for an American to travel financially... Today I went back to the hospital. There are so many differences there, I really would not know where to start to tell you. One thing I saw today was way different.

They are performing a new procedure that is called Amnion Therapy for burn patients. They take amniotic membrane from a donner mother's placenta and wash it off and put it on burns as a dressing. I watched them "clean" it, and I could not imagine that it was at all clean enough to put on a burn. IT kinda grossed me out a lot to watch- and even made me a bit squeemish... They do soak it in Gentamiacin for 2 hours- but that doesn't kill everthing... pluss they just wash it in a bowel in the sink with tap water. It was a little gross. The Drs. took me around to all the patients today which was nice and told me about their conditions and surgeries. They even opperate a bit differently than we do. Most of there problems are conginital due to malnutrition and probably polution. There was a lot of hypospadius repair and colonostomies done. Drs. are actually semi sterile. The nurses suck at it. This is proof that bacteria are good for you. These are people that are around bacteria all the time- and they do not get infections as much as an american would if they had to be opperated on here. There is no MRSA scares or VRE. The only kids that they put in Isolation are the burn kids. No one gowns or gloves though like we have to do (There is only on box of gloves on the unit- and it is Latex). They just treat him like a normal kid. They even blow on the burns to cool them and wash them with normal soap and water in a really gross bath tub. There are a lot of scald burns here. We have a kid that is 85%.

We are going to Chennai on Friday Morning. There is the Chennai open there that we might go to. Other than that, we are just going to hang out and see a lot of stuff. I will let you know how it went when we get back on Sunday. We were going to try to sleep in this morning, but there is a jungle right outside my window. There are dozens of birds and monkeys that squack and our neighbor ties his puppy out back to whine for a few hours every morning. There is also religious chanting at around 6everymorning. So we are getting up and getting ready to do a little shopping in town. Everyone else has to go to the hospital today, so we are waiting for them to leave town.

Okay- thats all for now. Off to town. I might not write again until Sunday.

Erika