Pigeon holed.

It seems I'll post whenever I can find a computer, ten minutes and an idea. Irrespective of how bad the post will be. Why? Simply because much as I think my phone and it's ability to interact with the Internet at any level from simple mail checks to telling me route information of the Delhi Metro to even USC 2257 approved material, I get tired of typing mails on a little keypad. And watching the Internet in little 2x3 inch bits. (bits, Internet ha ha). So here I am on this really cool laptop that has a screen that's bigger than the desktop back home and apparently is one of those wide screen things so when you watch Lord of The Rings on DVD you actually get to see the lone orc wanking off the normal screen. And some people will make quiz questions on that. Like what's his name? Was he of the White Hand of Saruman or the Eye of Sauron or just some freelance bystander turned on by all the carnage?
The rambling is due to many reasons. One, just outside my window two pigeons have decided to roost. Thus for the past few days I've seen them bring twig after twig akin to the little drops of water making oceans, and put together a nest and then in one flash of movement do the needful. There are now 3 eggs in that nest. I had initially planned pigeon omelets but they're just too damn small to make anything substantial. And too common to be touted as a delicacy a la caviar. Now I dread the time in the next few weeks when they'll hatch and all day and most of the night some fledgling squealing is going to drive me up the wall. Watch this space then. Or maybe not.
Second I haven't slept after last night's tryst in the emergency. Not that it was life-savingly busy but yeah got a few brownie points. The most frustrating is having to bump patients across (vide previous posts) after some aggressive resuscitation.
Third is Delhi and it's intense insanity. Like some moron who ran into a glass door. Like the Saint Gobain advertisements we all laughed at. He did. And despite every instinct to whack him across the head and ask him what he thought he was looking at I had to scan his head and surprisingly enough he seemed to have an intact brain.
And then at three I heard a sound that television and occasionally real life have taught me signifies a potential sight for sore eyes. High heels clicking on mosaic tiles.
Sound followed. Ugly unpolished pointy leather shoes found attached to chom man. Thus the angst.
Have this cool plan to get Bangalore's fashion gurus and force them to watch the common man here. Hopefully they'll die of apoplexy. Or something.

And then some...

Somehow my life revolves around monkeys. I'm tempted to say evolves too but that is apparently is hotly disputed in circles of intelligentsia in the city and out. Delhi's been a difficult place to adjust to. The weather, the people, even the language to an extent. But the one thing I've never had trouble with is food. Between my tapeworms and commensal bacteria it's almost always been good with the pipes. But the past week has been one of cramps and the unmentionables and yesterday I was informed that they found a dead monkey in the water supply.
Cringe people who read this. I did too.
Then I figured it was too late to purge, one way or the other and there was nothing to do but hope that chlorine is as good as they say it is.
Then I wondered for a moment if this was a good way to rid the world of them that live in and around "medical". Then I had to rush to the facilities.
It's been cold and raining for the past few days here and like Russia, the met department's been blaming some western cause for the muck that I have to wade through to get to work. There are moments of wonderful bright sunshine that drive the pigeons that are trying to build a nest in my window out into the open. I'm tossing the idea of pigeon egg omelets in my head but will just board up the window I guess.
All the preamble about my otherwise miserable life done with, the highlight of the past two days has been the serendipitous discovery that Thermal was playing less that ten minutes from Medical. And since I went there, the discovery that they can cover any band. Over twenty minutes they went seamlessly from Rush, U2, RHCP, Aerosmith, Stevie Wonder (Superstitious, can you believe it!), Dire Straits and maybe another couple which I can't remember and finally finished up with Stairway to Heaven. And they ended the show with Sunset Man. Joy to the world.
And the central government employees though are not paid well subsist on the many allowances that are permissible. For example, the hostel I live in is about five minutes away from the gate of Medical and thus "outside" the campus. Which means them that live there are eligible for conveyance allowance. Which is good. What is better is that I'm given 4.30 meters of white cloth and Rs 130/- to get myself two white coats to induce hypertension. I'm good with that. Aren't you?

Monkey Business

So I spend most of my days surrounded by monkeys. Real monkey monkeys and chom monkeys. To the extent that I now feel a bit like Jane. Goodall not Tarzan. "Choms like chimps have personalities too. They may all look the same the first time but soon one realizes that each has it's own identity. See this one's called Raj..."
No it's not so bad. But a little exaggeration hurt only the boy who cried wolf. But I am surrounded by specimens. Close encounters happen every other day. Some heart warming some decidedly scary. Like take for example this little runt who works across in the pediatric casualty. Five foot nothing, juvenile and his hair is in the same state of disarray every day. And by the same state, every single strand is out of place in the same angle, so to speak, every single day. And he's mad. Been around for a couple of years in pediatric casualty. QED perhaps.
Or another guy in medicine who saw me condemning a patient to acrossness (more about that) with flourish using a parker ink pen decided that I deserve better and should be gifting me a sheaffer sometime today.
Or people who randomly accost you while roaming lost in the bowels of aiims to show you the way, or those who'll bump into you while you have an 18G needle because they couldn't care less.
The past few days at the job have raised many a lofty thought on health care that in retrospect I think are meaningless. It's bad enough that I now realize that a single health care policy wouldn't work in this country, I now think that it won't even work in a single hospital.
AIIMS is the premier medical institute in the country. At the apex of it all. Does it make sense for it to have a casualty and accident and emergency services? Shouldn't it be a tertiary referral institute. And only do stuff that "lesser" institutes can't. Chitra in Trivandrum and SGPGI at Lucknow already function that way. But we have a casualty. Then shouldn't we be doing it justice. Or be doing the patients justice considering we don't have a choice regarding the presence or absence of emergency services. On an aside their presence is what brought me here so I shouldn't be cribbing.
As one enters the casualty one sees in big bold letters a board that states that it is a policy in this hospital to not admit patients once all the beds are full. Which they almost always are. So no matter who it is, and delhi is filled with politicians of all shapes and sizes, if there are no beds then there is no admission. So a substantial number of patients are "acrossed" to Safdarjung Hospital. It's pretty hilarious once you get used to it but till then you, like me can feel bad about the 2 patients an hour that Safdarjung has agreed to admit if sent from the institute.
But we have a 24 hour coffee shop and a General store that will procure anything (from mats to sleep on to USB LAN cards). We have half a dozen CTs that run almost 24/7, central lines for free in casualty, ventilators if required, good patient load and frequent resuscitations. Some of whom survive to be acrossed or icued.
It's a good hospital. And I'm learning to like it.

And to make the title valid this here are the lyrics to Bebot by the Black Eyed Peas. (Goofy, if you're reading this, enjoy!)

TEST BLOG

So this is how one Blogs with predictive text and the risk of sms
thumb. there seems to be an option to photo Blog will explore it.
cheers to technology.

Work in Progress.

Those of you who came by yesterday and saw the title mobile blog and nothing else, my apologies. But I do hope to get that up and running in a couple of days. Work has begun in earnest and I'm back to being bored as hell. The hours are good. The work mind numbing but this as they say is the small step in the right direction. Nothing funny's happened out side of an MP who wanted to get someone he knew admitted. When we pointed out that the hospital policy was to only admit if beds are available he went on a ranting spree till we pointed out that he was of the policy making ilk...

Somehow think that the double standards that politicians lay down for themselves are an unfortunate fallout of a pseudo communist regime. Not that it doesn't happen in capitalist/democratic states, but just feels so commie when that happens.
My phone continues to amaze and impress me. In fact the more I'm disillusioned with the apex of health care in this country, the more I love my phone. There is of course one small problem. No network has a signal strong enough in the hospital. Except for MTNL which has a tower bang in the middle of the campus and in exchange gave the hospital mobile phones instead of pagers. As a friend says, how cool is that?
This evil conspiracy ensures that when at work the mobile isn't a distraction anymore.
Thus if called and found unreachable I'm at work. Mail me instead.
Between gmail's mobile friendly version and opera mini I think I should be able to blog from the phone. that would revolutionise things.
Nothing else blogworthy. Adios.

Ready? AIIMS... DAAG - The Fire

Dear God,
I do know that I don't believe in you and often our interactions are by proxy to say the least. All I want to know is if the last two days of running from pillar to post at the apex of the Indian Health care system is any indication of things to come in both life and afterlife.
Eagerly anticipating your reply.
Sincerely yours.

Crazy kiya re only. So the academic section will not let me join till I'm declared medically fit before 12.30 PM. The medical officer will not see me till I get my urine tested (before 10 AM) and xRay done. And ENT and Eye are cursory but essential. And after all the running around over the past 48 hours, today, apparently might just be the big day.
Notwithstanding the fact that there is no accommodation. There hasn't been for six months. Married residents have a year's waiting list, which is reason enough to not indulge in handkerchief-pandkerchief. And it looks like it's sardines for a few days.
Then again there's the bright side. here's a shot albeit fuzzy, of the many fuzzy companions in Aiims.