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Will Canestaro '06 is spending the summer working as a Medical Services Intern through Child Family Health International in Dehradun, India.
Namesteji from Dehra Dun. Although I have been in India for over two weeks I am just now settling down in the city. I spent all of last week work with Dr. U.S. Paul in the village of Than Gaon which is about a 40 min jeep ride north of Dehra Dun. Dr. Paul serves approximately 16 villages in the area and offers all of his services free of charge to villagers (thanks to some generous donations from American NGO's). While in the village I lived in a mud hut with 3 other Americans as we provided support staff to Dr. Paul while he held clinic in Than Gaon and when he went on his hikes to the surrounding villages. Mostly the work that I did consisted of pre-examination; blood pressure checking, looking in pupils and ears, checking breathing sounds et cetera. I am currently in Dehra Dun working in two locations: the Doon Coronation Hospital in the morning and the Sanjevani Nursing Home in the afternoon doing much of the same things that I did in Than Gaon although in a much more refined way thanks to the better facilities here in the hospitals.
I am learning an incredible amount about medicine from the doctors here as they deal with everything from meningitis to typhoid to tuberculosis to heart attacks to trauma to the most basic complications of poverty and malnutrition. I have to admit that the nature of the work that I do requires a lot of moving from site to site which although it presents a large opportunity for learning is very stressful as I am always trying to get comfortable in a new location. I feel like as soon as I get comfortable with a city or village I pack up and move on to the next place.
I had a rather difficult time adjusting once I left the airplane. I had no conception of the magnitude of poverty here. I have never seen so many people living on the streets in the basest of conditions. Although this was hard to deal with in itself, the largest problem for me was getting over what I viewed to be Indians general complacency with the issue.
Monsoon is also in full swing here and started two days after I arrived in Delhi. It doesn't rain all day or everyday as I imagined it might before I came but the heat will rise and eventually reach a point where the clouds can no longer contain themselves and the skies open. This also affects my work in clinics. As I am quickly discovering rain means people stay at home so a doctor who would typically see 60-70 patients in a day will only see 6-7 when it is raining.
I feel as if I can honestly say that so far being here has done more to change my perspective than any other experience at Dartmouth, and I still have 6 more weeks.
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