So about a month and a half ago, right around when I first came to Deer Park, I slipped while playing basketball, my right leg shooting under a chainlink fence, scraping a deep V wound around 4 inches long into my shin. I went back to my room, washed the wound thoroughly with soap and water, applied a topical antibiotic, and bandaged it. After five or so days covered, I did what I normally do in the US: I uncovered it and started washing it with soap and water twice a day. This also being the time I was getting settled into Deer Park and making friends here, I didn’t really notice how severely the wound wasn’t healing until a few days later, when both sides of the wound were inflamed, the whole surrounding skin area was bright red, and they were small, white bubbles of pus forming around the lower edge of it. I remember very clearly being like “Hey, might be wrong with my leg” straight to “… Shit.”
I ran straightaway to an American doctor staying here who took one look at my leg, did a slow, ponderous head nod and drawled “Yep. That’s pretty infected,” before giving a half-sad chuckle. I started on a course of Azithromycin and topical antibiotic, and he lanced the small bubbles of pus using his “third world medical kit,” read: a needle sterilized with a candle. With a rigorous course of oral Azithromycin, topical antibiotics, and rewrapping the wound when it was checked by the Dr. it was slow going, but going nonetheless, and the redness gradually receded as the wound itself granulated inwards towards healing.
Then it went to hell. Apparently, while the upper areas of the wound are healed inwards and scabbed over, the lower area (the point of the V) still had harmful bacteria, causing the wound to abscess. Suddenly, there was a massive amount of swelling and accompanying it, thick worms of bloody pus leaking from the wound. Unsurprisingly, I decided to just go to a hospital.
The first striking thing about Indian hospitals is how chaotic they are compared to the sterile ‘order’ of US hospitals. Everyone is pushing towards one or two counters, in and out of a number of small barely-labelled doorways, patients and orderlies alike churn against each other with tidal inextricability. To even get to this central current, one first walks through the decidedly unhallowed spaces where in bright red surplus chairs the uncounted sickly wait, having made it to counter #1, now in stasis, exhibiting only blank-eyed symptoms while they rest before shuffling back into the current to find their small door once their name is called. Luckily, one of my family friends in the area knew the lead surgeon of a hospital, allowing me to bypass much of the waiting around. After a battery of blood and bone tests to make sure the infection was only present in the skin, the doctor brought me into a small, 6’x8’ operating theater, laid a small sheet of plastic underneath my leg to catch the blood, and began, while orderlies filtered in and out, stopping for a moment to tsk at the proceedings.
I really think I’ve gained a lot from this experience. Particularly from this, though I’m yet unsure what exactly I’ve gained. The doctor had his index finger about second-knuckle deep into my leg as I laid, fully conscious on the table, he just slowly panned his eyes to match mine and said, with a small tut, “This is really very bad.”
Then it went to hell. Apparently, while the upper areas of the wound are healed inwards and scabbed over, the lower area (the point of the V) still had harmful bacteria, causing the wound to abscess. Suddenly, there was a massive amount of swelling and accompanying it, thick worms of bloody pus leaking from the wound. Unsurprisingly, I decided to just go to a hospital.
The first striking thing about Indian hospitals is how chaotic they are compared to the sterile ‘order’ of US hospitals. Everyone is pushing towards one or two counters, in and out of a number of small barely-labelled doorways, patients and orderlies alike churn against each other with tidal inextricability. To even get to this central current, one first walks through the decidedly unhallowed spaces where in bright red surplus chairs the uncounted sickly wait, having made it to counter #1, now in stasis, exhibiting only blank-eyed symptoms while they rest before shuffling back into the current to find their small door once their name is called. Luckily, one of my family friends in the area knew the lead surgeon of a hospital, allowing me to bypass much of the waiting around. After a battery of blood and bone tests to make sure the infection was only present in the skin, the doctor brought me into a small, 6’x8’ operating theater, laid a small sheet of plastic underneath my leg to catch the blood, and began, while orderlies filtered in and out, stopping for a moment to tsk at the proceedings.
I really think I’ve gained a lot from this experience. Particularly from this, though I’m yet unsure what exactly I’ve gained. The doctor had his index finger about second-knuckle deep into my leg as I laid, fully conscious on the table, he just slowly panned his eyes to match mine and said, with a small tut, “This is really very bad.”
The next two weeks were daily packing of the wound they created to clean out the infection fully, along with a short course of IV antibiotics and a longer one of oral, broad-spectrum antibiotics. I’m back at Deer Park (in time for a teaching by Geshe Dorji Damdul!) getting my wound wrapped daily at the local Tibetan clinic and I feel great. I have full mobility and am going hiking tomorrow.
One thing I’ve noticed here, and this has been echoed by all the Doctors, US and Indian, I’ve met, is that while the conditions in which care are given are drastically different from in the US, the quality of care itself matches the US near-exactly. At each of the 3 medical centers I’ve been to, from a more urban area to the quite rural one in Bir, I’ve been uniformly impressed by the care to the point of disbelief. The Tibetan nurses here are better than any nurse I’ve ever been treated by in the US! Please, if you travel, do not be unnecessarily afraid of the established medical centers! If I had gone straight to a hospital right away I would’ve avoided a lot of unnecessary trouble. Even at the local rotary eye hospital in Palampur, they perform the exact same surgery with the exact same equipment to remove cataracts as my local US hospital, but here they do 18-20 surgeries a day while in the US they do 1-2!
The good side of all of this is how comfortable I’ve become with Indian medical care (the Tibetan nurses are so sweet and I get to play with their kids while they wrap my leg!), the cool scar I’m going to get, and the formal instruction in bandaging and proper wound care I’ve received. I’m glad that this has all been a learning experience and I’m happy with where I am at the tail-end of it all. While I've definitely gained from this ordeal, I definitely definitely do not want to go through something similar again. Time for less basketball. Or, at least, more careful wound care.
One thing I’ve noticed here, and this has been echoed by all the Doctors, US and Indian, I’ve met, is that while the conditions in which care are given are drastically different from in the US, the quality of care itself matches the US near-exactly. At each of the 3 medical centers I’ve been to, from a more urban area to the quite rural one in Bir, I’ve been uniformly impressed by the care to the point of disbelief. The Tibetan nurses here are better than any nurse I’ve ever been treated by in the US! Please, if you travel, do not be unnecessarily afraid of the established medical centers! If I had gone straight to a hospital right away I would’ve avoided a lot of unnecessary trouble. Even at the local rotary eye hospital in Palampur, they perform the exact same surgery with the exact same equipment to remove cataracts as my local US hospital, but here they do 18-20 surgeries a day while in the US they do 1-2!
The good side of all of this is how comfortable I’ve become with Indian medical care (the Tibetan nurses are so sweet and I get to play with their kids while they wrap my leg!), the cool scar I’m going to get, and the formal instruction in bandaging and proper wound care I’ve received. I’m glad that this has all been a learning experience and I’m happy with where I am at the tail-end of it all. While I've definitely gained from this ordeal, I definitely definitely do not want to go through something similar again. Time for less basketball. Or, at least, more careful wound care.