Report of 2 April 2006
Hi from Chennai -
Boy, 3rd April (date of departure to the U.S.) seemed really far away, and here it's the night before. I leave in about 2 hours.
Hope all are well. I wound up at the Banyan this week. One of our more troublesome patients, whose psychosis has been resistant to treatment (but I am unsure if she takes the meds) returned to the B and proceeded to get very violent w/ the staff. I am not educated enough to understand her illness and its consequences, and the acts seemed very wilful plus phenomenally damaging, so I let the social workers know and chastised this pt. We are all trying to come up w/ a strategy to cope.
Our pt w/ HIV is on Siddha (a form of Indian medicine) meds and I'd nagged the treating facility to find out if she ought to get on Anti Retro-Viral Treatment (ART) or not. As it turns out, they did a blood test, and determined that she should start ART. Thankfully, this lady has not had the infections that can affect those whose white blood cell count is low ("opportunistic infections") and I'm hoping her good health and good luck prevail. We gesture wildly to each other to communicate, as neither of us speaks the other's language.
We took some pics of my patients at the veg market, and they enjoyed posing. We also wound up tutoring w/ a lot of presents, many donated by you all, and I am ready to hit the plane. We had lunch w/ my brother and his family today and that was grand fun. My niece looks exactly like her father and brings w/ her all the novelty a little baby will.
"The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man's taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled." - Robert Benchley
Unw -
Renu
Boy, 3rd April (date of departure to the U.S.) seemed really far away, and here it's the night before. I leave in about 2 hours.
Hope all are well. I wound up at the Banyan this week. One of our more troublesome patients, whose psychosis has been resistant to treatment (but I am unsure if she takes the meds) returned to the B and proceeded to get very violent w/ the staff. I am not educated enough to understand her illness and its consequences, and the acts seemed very wilful plus phenomenally damaging, so I let the social workers know and chastised this pt. We are all trying to come up w/ a strategy to cope.
Our pt w/ HIV is on Siddha (a form of Indian medicine) meds and I'd nagged the treating facility to find out if she ought to get on Anti Retro-Viral Treatment (ART) or not. As it turns out, they did a blood test, and determined that she should start ART. Thankfully, this lady has not had the infections that can affect those whose white blood cell count is low ("opportunistic infections") and I'm hoping her good health and good luck prevail. We gesture wildly to each other to communicate, as neither of us speaks the other's language.
We took some pics of my patients at the veg market, and they enjoyed posing. We also wound up tutoring w/ a lot of presents, many donated by you all, and I am ready to hit the plane. We had lunch w/ my brother and his family today and that was grand fun. My niece looks exactly like her father and brings w/ her all the novelty a little baby will.
"The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man's taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled." - Robert Benchley
Unw -
Renu
posted by Renu Weiss at
3:57 AM
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