Report of 7 May '06

Hello from the Carmel public library -

It is great to be here. I started working this week at Citizens Health Center, a clinic in downtown Indianapolis that I worked at last year. I've been doing some administrative things for starters, and when a colleague speculated if it wasn't boring, I told her that I knew women who'd done much worse things for money. There was a scheduling snafu one day, w/ patients scheduled for a doc who wasn't there, and I saw said patients. It was fun - patient care is my thing, research isn't.

One of my patients was a 22 yo Black man, who came to be tested for a sexually transmitted disease (STD), as his girlfriend had tested positive for it. He was having unprotected intercourse, had broken up w/ the girlfriend and continued the habit w/ a subsequent girlfriend. I told him it didn't matter to me if he wanted millions of children, but that this habit could be life-threatening. He was finishing up college, and I told him he was bright, motivated and cute (at which point he straightened up and said, "Thank you"), and that we could not afford to lose him to HIV. He also stated he smoked marijuana and I told him it could make him impotent; many of my young patients seem to care little about getting strokes and heart attacks from drug use, but when I mention the impotence angle, they are quite interested.

What do I know about growing up poor and Black? Nothing. I know little about surviving in the face of daily adversity, the pressure to have relationships w/ the opposite sex, early intimacy, that college might not be an option for all. I am ignorant of this milieu. What I can do is draw on my medical education (and not my cultural cluelessness), and point out the consequences of choices my patients make, like the lack of condom use. Often, my patients listen; as to whether they take my advice, I do not know. Some of them, though, do appear motivated - to me, and to the clinic's social workers and counsellors, many of whom are Black. I like this: Black colleagues establish almost instant rapport.

My good fortune has extended to my being able to attend Grand Rounds and noon conferences at St. Vincent, the hospital where I did my residency. I was also lucky enough to attend a series of meetings at St. Luke's Methodist Church, on medical missions and the church's outreach programs, many of which are international. I met some very committed and wonderful folks, and it continues to puzzle me that people here would be interested in care of the impoverished so far away - in Haiti, Sierra Leone, India. Anyone out there who wants to throw in their opinion is welcome to do so.

I watched "Napoleon Dynamite" last night, a movie that my sons had been urging me to see. It was weird and sweet, an effortlessly flowing movie. I have also enjoyed walking in the verdant surroundings - we don't see very much greenery in urban Chennai. Naren and Navin are spending the weekend w/ the family of their aunt Diane, Scott's sister, a very affectionate young woman who will spoil them and make their time memorable.

Are there some websites better than others for buying domestic U.S. plane tix? Thanks.

Unw -

Renu