Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Just Your Average Monday

Yesterday, for the first time in almost two weeks, there was no eye camp-- which meant I spent the day at Hande Hospital in west Anna Nagar, observing surgeries.

In the morning, there were 4 cataract surgeries-- the technology still amazes me, and Dr. Varman's efficiency in the operating room is incredible. Each surgery only takes him about 15 minutes-- I've seen other doctors take up to 45 minutes to do one intraocular lens replacement.

I spent the afternoon with Dr. Rajiv, a general surgeon, who last had me observing a hemorrhoids surgery. This time, he was stitching up the fractured hand of a man who'd been in a motorbike accident. He'd fractured his fingertip and lost his fingernail, so Dr. Rajiv was essentially stitching the tip of his finger to the base of his nail. But first he had to pull the man's heavy rings off of his swollen, fracture finger... It looked so painful; I'm shuddering now even as I write this.

By evening, I was ready for something a little less bloody, so the two newly arrived volunteers and I took off for Kappaleeshwarar Temple, a beautiful Hindu temple in Mylapore, a district in southern Chennai. The temple is dedicated to the god Shiva, the destroyer, and had minor shrines to his sons, Ganesh and Murugan.






We also managed to catch the tail end of a classical dance performance, which was absolutely beautiful:



Outside the temple, we found a gypsy woman selling beautiful glass jewelry-- I really loved the look of the jewelry by lamplight, so I tried to capture the image, and ended up buying more earrings than I should have.

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