Kittens and Car Bombs

There is a young teen blogger in Baghdad who loves kittens and Hello Kitty. She posts lots of photos of very cute kittens, and tells how she is doing in school.

Then, one day, there is this:

It has been along time since I posted my last subject, the situation here do not help to write at all, the temperature is very high, no electricity, we have only 4 hours of electrical power in the 24 hours of the day, no security, no water, no peace and there are always explosions and bombcars, as an example, four days ago a big explosion happened near my house, it was done by abombcar, this bombcar cost people life's, broke windows, and brought fear.

Our windows were broken and so are windows of most houses in the neighborhood but thanks to God we are all fine but who knows in the next time we may get hurt, after the explosion we cleaned the broken windows so no one get hurt from it and so did our neighbors and some of them were out side wondering what happened, we were expecting that the American soldiers will search our house and the other houses in the neighborhood, but they didn't and that is weird because this is not the first explosion happened here, any way tings went back to normal few hours later but people died, Two of those who died were children about 10 years of age and they use to bring us fuel for our electrical generator...

Stay safe

Raghda

What a childhood.

And we are responsible.

Visit her site and drop her a note.

Mardis Gras

A Canadian friend of mine, Chrystia, sent me the following Bill Moyers quote:

"I mean, think about it. Other than the war in Iraq , the Katrina disaster, the deficit, the CIA leak, torture, stopping stem cell research, homeland security, global warming and undercutting science, we've yet to really feel the negative effects of the Bush administration."

And she has the right to complain; after all, she was on vacation in New Orleans when Katrina stuck. Since she was just visiting, and didn't have a car (like most of the poor people), she was stuck in town during the evacuation.

Chrystia spent several days at the convention center. While Condi shopped for $500 shoes and took in Spamalot, Cheney bought a new mansion, and Bush continued his vacation in Texas and played air guitar with country stars, she bore the brunt of Katrina. And survived.

But no one could have predicted the breach of the levees, Bush later claimed. Except, as it turns out, the entire team that briefed him the day before. Via teleconference. The head of the weather service. Even Michael Brown, who was later scapegoated. Even the Arabian horse expert was more engaged, more concerned than the Boy King. AP video here.www.crooksandliars.com/2006/03/01.html

It's been six months since Katrina struck, and not much seems to be happening in New Orleans. As always, the administration promised much ad delivered little. Sure, Bechtel and Halliburton may have won fat contracts, but little has trickled down to the beleaguered citizens. Soon the 2006 hurricane season will be upon us, and very little has been done to secure the levees.

But the rich are getting their tax breaks, so all is well in the world.....Bush World.

An interesting source of information about NO is blogger Scout Prime. You can read her blog here.

We Will Not Be Silenced

"To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men"
- Abraham Lincoln

Brilliant! Go watch!

Men Gone Crazy!

I go away for a week, and the men of America have gone crazy. Not all of them, mind you, just the small-minded bigots who want to control women. It's open season on reproductive rights.

In South Dakota, the state legislature has passed a bill to restrict ALL ABORTIONS except to save the life of the mother. There are no exceptions for health, incest or rape. Only certain death. And the Good Old Boys are proud of their work. They know the law will be challenged, and hope this will be the one that lets the GOBs in the newly constituted Supreme Court get rid of that pesky Roe decision once and for all.

In Missouri, Governor Matt Blunt has declared war on birth control. In today's Washington Post, his chairman of the board of election commissioners of St. Louis, Ed Martin, is quoting talking about the national effort to restrict access to emergency contraception and the pill.

"Basically, every state now has an effort going to either make Plan B more easily available or to slow it down or make sure that pharmacists don't have to dispense if they oppose it," said Edward R. Martin, a lawyer and lobbyist with Americans United for Life, who has helped put together some of the proposed "conscience" clauses.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation:

Researchers estimate that widespread use of EC (emergency contraception) could potentially prevent up to half of the approximately 3 million unintended pregnancies that occur annually in the U.S., and one study has suggested that broader use could help prevent as many as 700,000 pregnancies that now result in abortion.

The argument that opponents of emergency contraception are doing so because they oppose abortion just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. EC prevents unintended pregnancy, which prevents abortion. You would think that the so-called "pro-lifers" would be for something which prevents abortion.

But they're not. They oppose it because they oppose all forms of birth control, because emergency contraception and the pill work exactly the same way. From the Washington Post story:

The primary opposition to Plan B, however, has come from groups that contend that it can lead to very early abortions -- though experts say it acts in the same way as regular contraceptives.

The experts are right. There is no difference--Plan B is really just a targeted, higher dose of birth control pills. Unless you, like the Monty Pythons, believe that "every sperm is sacred" and every menstrual cycle a missed baby.

These so-called "pro-lifers" are actually anti-sex and anti-woman. If they had their way, all non-procreational sex would be banned. What these lawmakers really want is control. Male control of women's bodies. Societal control of what is most private and personal, one's reproductive and sexual choices.

Can the Republic of Gilead be far behind?

Notice anything odd about this photo? It's Bush signing an anti-abortion bill. I think this grouping says it all.

Catching Up a Bit

I've gotten a bit behind in my posts, I'm afraid. Sometimes I just get too busy to write, and sometimes I am so tired by evening that I only want to sleep. But it's a quiet weekend, so here are few more observations about India.

BTW, I have been keeping up a bit with what's going on back home via the internet. Prasad got the computer experts in and we now have WiFi in the Mathews household. I'm probably as well informed as if I were home, and reading the Hindu each morning keeps me up on the news of India. The most interesting thing I've read recently has been this speech by Bill Moyers.He speaks to the way money has corrupted modern politics, and quotes Louis Brandeis, one of the greatest of our Supreme Court justices: “You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy, but you cannot have both.” So true, as we are seeing today.

To keep up with the news (non-mainstream media), click on the websites on the right. I'll be back to e-mailing articles of note when I get home, but for now, you're on your own, mostly.

Danziger had an India-themed cartoon recently; sad, but pretty much true:

I wandered around Vellore the other day, and took these photos. This is a coconut seller in town:

And work is always going on at CMCH:

Hospital Day

Somehow, despite five trips to Vellore, I have never been here for Hospital Day before. I'm not sure how I could have missed this annual event.

It is no longer a single day, but three, of festivities. I knew it was almost upon us when a large balloon flying over the hospital proclaimed it so.

I had expected that there might be a few booths, and perhaps table, set up with information. But no, this was much bigger. Coming upon it, you wouldn't think so--a few signs and banners, and a tent or two.

But once you entered, you realized the extent of this fair, snaking around the entire side and back of the hospital, with booth upon booth (more than a hundred in all!)

Each department of CMC has a booth, and they try to outdo each other. They were all crowded with visitors when I tried to look. The OB/GYN department had some sort of dioramas depicting intrauterine life and the menstrual cycle, and was full of schoolgirls in their uniforms. The electrical department had displays about how electricity and motors worked. Gastroenterology had all sorts of scopes displayed.

There were also booths selling things, and a food court. Avinash had been on Friday night, and sampled all the fare. There was a lot to choose from, but no chicken! The bird flu scare has taken chicken off many menus, including Chinatown and, it seems, CMC.

Visitors came from all parts of town, I saw many a group of giggling schoolgirls, one of whom came up and shook my hand and said hello on a dare. At their request, I took a photo of a small group of schoolboys from the Don Bosco school, who were with their teacher, an Aussie girl. They were dragging her around, seeing all the sights, and having an absolutely marvelous time.

C.C.Mathews

Friday, February 24, 2006

Jiji's father, C.C.Mathews, died on the evening of the 22nd in Vellore, and was buried today in Madras. He was 75 years old, and died quietly after a long illness.

I did not get to know him very well, only meeting him a few short times in the past, before his final dementia set in. He was a lovely man, based on the affection shown him by his family and friends.

C.C. was known in his youth, I am told, as "Mathews Maths", due to his great mathematical talent. He rose from humble beginnings to be the head engineer of India Railways. He raised three daughters, educated them, and saw that they were well married and settled. He got to see his six grandchildren and to spoil them, as grandfathers should. And he loved his wife, who misses him very much.

It was a traditional Orthodox funeral. The family and friends gathered, and sang and prayed aloud.

Words were spoken by those who knew and loved him. And then he was buried in the Christian cemetery near the house where he lived.

He will be missed.

Antenatal Clinic

Today was my first day in the antenatal clinic at the LCECU. It is held once a week, and is quite busy, more so than when I was here last year.

Last year Sara and I had developed new forms for use in our clinic. Until April of 2005, our clinic provided prenatal care, but we did not deliver patients, With that change, our charting changed, too. One of my jobs in clinic was to determine if the forms were working as they should, and if they were being utilized appropriately.

We saw a large number of returning patients, and fourteen new ones. It was the first chance for the nurses to use the dopplers I had brought in the clinic, and they really enjoyed them. Not only could they find the fetal heartbeat in a noisy room more easily, but one of the dopplers even gave a digital readout of the rate! Thanks again to Doctor Bayram, my boss for donating them. He is a hero in Vellore.

Dr. Kiruba and I also had a chance to try out the new ultrasound machine that Sara had somehow gotten donated to the eLCECU. It is a beautiful machine, and very new, so no one has used it yet to speak of, Kiruba an dI played with it, figuring out how to see and measure with it, and then tried it out on our new OB patients. We decided to try and scan them all, partly for our education, and partly to ascertain gestational ages with more accuracy. To our surprise, three of the ten patients we scanned has horribly incorrect dates (more than two months off). All of the patients were shown their babies, and enjoyed that experience.

There's a lot of work to be done, but we got off to a good start today!

Lotus Flowers

The lotus is, in the end, just a water lily. The pure white lotus holds the distinction, I am told, of being the only plant to fruit and flower simultaneously. It grows in muddy ponds, and flowers at night. The Egyptians prized it, and often pictured it in their paintings. Homer even mentioned it, speaking of the lotus eaters, who occupied the north coast of Africa and lived on the lotus, which brought forgetfulness and happy indolence.

In India, the purple lotus seems more common. I've seen it growing in all sorts of bodies of water, from pristine ponds to horrible waste-filled ditches. It is beautiful, and Lakshmi , wife of the Hindu god Vishnu, and one of the incarnations of the Mother-Goddess, is often portrayed as sitting on a lotus, her traditional symbol.

At the LCECU, we have purple lotus growing in our fish pond. Every day there seems to be a new bloom, and there were three at last count. The flowers are lovely and delicate.

Sara had the fish pond installed in the middle of our courtyard for its beauty. It has no "practical" reason for existing, and some might consider it a waste of money. After all, we are the low cost effective care unit. ut why should the poor not have a beautiful place to come to and to get treated? Should only the well-off be able to experience the spiritual comfort of beauty?

I've often seen people, especially the children, enjoying the pond. They like to sit, quietly, and watch the fishes, or contemplate the flowers. It is a good thing.

P.S. I must now confess that the photo above was actually staged. I've lived with my secret for over a year now. Last year, when my friend Mary Ganguli was here at the LCECU, she commented on the children by the pond, and asked me to get a photo. Never again, in the following month, did I come upon children by the pond. (We were having some technical difficulties, and there were often pumps and other equipment in and around the pond.) So, on my last day, Sara found a few children and we had them pose for us.

First baby

Today, Tuesday, I witnessed the delivery of my first baby at the LCECU. She was not the first baby born there--at least 71 (based on my review of hospital records) have preceded her. But she was the first in whose birth I participated.

This was what I had spent a month working towards last year--new life, safely delivered, a healthy mom and a healthy child. And, in this case, this is what we had.

Our mom was a first time mom--a "primi" in obstetric jargon. She was scared, and a bit alone. Her marriage had been a love match, not arranged, and her own family had forsaken her. She had been bought in by her husband's family, who took good care of her. Prenatal classes, such as we have in the west, don't really exist here, and most women go into labor not really knowing what to expect.

Sara and I stayed for the last hour of her labor, intimidating the staff a bit, at least enough to keep them from cutting a "routine" episiotomy. I also had them try some different positions in labor (besides flat on the back). The midwives we have were hospital trained, and are used to enemas (forbidden here), shaves (ditto), episiotomies and laboring and pushing while fully supine. We are trying to reverse all of this. There's still a bit of work to be done.

Once we had gotten our patient sitting up to push, the baby popped out quite quickly, and with only a minor tear. She was about 2300 grams, and quite cute.

I look forward to quite few more of them this month.

Crows

It takes a while to get used to all of the crows. The crows in India are smaller than our American ones (which are almost as big as ravens) and much more common. They are city birds, cawing and scavenging at will. It's not unusual to see large groups of them at the roadside.

It's been a while since I've seen any number of crows back home. They used to be more common--small groups would land in my yard, and feed underneath my bird feeders, providing needed competition (and comeuppance) for the blue jays. But no more. West Nile virus seems to have struck them quite strongly, and few remain.

There is no such constraint on the population here in Vellore, and the hospital grounds appear to be a major roost. Crows are gregarious birds. At night they perch together and sleep together.

In late afternoon, as the sun is beginning to fade, they begin to congregate. One suddenly sees large flocks of them circling and cawing, and it goes on for hours. The trees on the campus are all full of crows, noisy crows, cawing into the night, until full dark. Only then is there any semblance of quiet on the campus.

Cricket on a Sunday

Despite the many years I've spent traveling around the former British empire, I've never quite been able to figure out cricket. It seemed the most inscrutable and interminable of sports--bowlers and overs going on for days. And all while dressed in lovely white outfits.

Douglas Adams had an interesting take on cricket--in his parallel universe, cricket players were actually storm troopers, killing machines. And they wreaked a bit of havoc when materializing during an important match.

In reality, cricket is complex, more a game of strategy than action, not unlike baseball. Even much of the terminology is similar--hits, outs, runs. But the mathematics is more complex, with a hit being worth from zero to six runs, depending on how and where it is hit. There are two hitters, multiple pitchers (here called bowlers), two bases, ten outs and 50 overs. Well, in a single day match. In test cricket, which can go on for days, the numbers change.

Sunday there was an India-Pakistan one day match, which the entire country watched with rapt attention. Pakistan did well initially, but then was proven not to have as good a strategy as thought--leaving your best hitters until last, or so Imran Khan declared loudly and frequently, is not a way to win.

Anyway, one of the best reasons to watch cricket is Dhoni:

Carnival in Vellore

Bagayam, actually. Saturday was the annual medical student carnival, and it was held on the medical school campus in green, verdant Bagayam. It had all the usual trappings--game booths, a jumble sale, fast food, a loud DJ blaring pop tunes, and lots of people milling aimlessly around.

There were some familiar faces in the crowd, and a few packs of children, but mostly it was medical students taking part. How young they are; mind you, they start medical school at 18 in India, so it was not all just perspective. Their dress was interesting, ranging from full beautiful silken saris to tops and jeans. Some of the young men had kurtas with sashes and jeans. A generation before, all of the women would have been in traditional clothes, saris and salwars. This generation has grown up used to western clothes; one wonders if the next will become fully westernized.

We arrived much too early, while the sun was still in the sky. It is hot in Vellore during the day, 90s and above, with little cloud cover. Evenings are another story--cool, breezy, tropical nights are an absolute pleasure.

There was not much to buy at the jumble sale--mostly Prasad's donated old books. But Avinash had fun with the games, stuffed himself full of all sorts of snacks, and had a dragon painted on his face. I had a flowering vine hennaed onto my right hand, and enjoyed a chikoo shake.

Baby Tarun enjoyed everything, and remained awake and alert, escaping occasionally from Jiji and his constraints.

Freedom is a beautiful thing.

Sleepless in Vellore

Jet lag is a challenge. There's just no good way around it, despite the claims of many pill pushers. One is fighting millions of years of evolutionary pressure (or the Will of God, of you're a creationist) when flying around the globe at lightning speed.

My body is in Vellore, but my metabolism is somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. I fade early, and then wake up, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, at two or three in the morning (my normal bed time!). I'll be OK in a few more days, but, in the mean time, I yawn and nod off at inopportune times.

I spent today (well, the morning) at the LCECU, catching up with Sara and staff on a year's worth of news, and looking around the Labour Unit. I missed Antenatal Clinic yesterday (slept the whole day through), so will have to wait until next Thursday to check on it.

Babies have been born on our unit since last April, and most have done quite well. Lots of mothers have been transfered (with good outcomes)to the main hospital, and the nipple stimulation protocol we wrote last year has been a hit (and fairly successful in avoiding post-dated pregnancy)!

There's work to be done, though. Dr. Bayram donated two portable dopplers (for listening to babies' heartbeats), so the staff will have to be trained in their proper use, and Sara managed to acquire an ultrasound unit, which I will have to learn to use and then teach others. I have to reassess our protocols and review them with new staff, and work on labour procedures and documentation.

It should be fun.

Meanwhile, the weekend is here, with some quiet days (albeit hot ones) and cool nights. Time to catch up with Jiji, Prasad, Avinash and baby Tarun, as well as my old TV-serial-watching buddy, Amachi. There's a carnival at the medical school tomorrow, and shopping and gossiping to do.

The Glamour of Air Travel

I have read that once, in the long distance past, air travel was glamorous and exciting. People would dress up formally for the trip, and pilots were considered very, very cool.

When I first started flying frequently, back in the late 80s, there was still some attempt made to keep it exciting, to treat passengers well.

Those days are long gone.

Today, air travel is perhaps as glamorous as bus travel. Where once it was comfortable seats and cocktails, passengers (well, at least those of us condemned to that hellhole known as steerage....errr, tourist class) are now packed in, neck to jowl, and thrown perhaps the occasional bag of peanuts. I had the passenger in front of me lean his seat back, only to find it six inches from my face.

Things have changed.

My flight to India was not in the least glamorous, exciting or even fun. It wasn't even particularly horrible. It was tedious. Simply tedious.

First, the airlines keep finding ways to charge you more and more for what was once free. Weight limits have been lowered on luggage, so they can charge $25 per bag for what was once free.

Second, the discomfort. Seats have been squeezed together so tight, and there aren't many empty ones, that it is hard to stretch out and get comfortable (especially if you have long legs of a bad knee). This would be tolerable on short haul flights, but for eight or ten hours at a stretch is is torture.

Third, the airports are a mess. Paris de Gaulle, which I passed through, is under construction. Almost every airport I travel through seems to be. I had to take a bus from the airplane to the terminal, where I walked about a mile to get to another bus, which then took me to another terminal, where I wandered about before getting to my gate, where I stood in line to get a chance to cross several lanes of traffic in the rain to climb the stairs onto my next airplane. The agent at the gate in Detroit had told me I was lucky that my flights were going into and leaving from the same gate. If this was luck.......

I suppose it's better, time-wise, that travel in the old days, by ships and trains, where I would have spent weeks or months getting to India. But it was an enviable pace of life. I think of it wistfully as I am dashing across airports, worried about making my connection. Tropical breezes, pleasant onboard conversations, scurvy, storms at sea, plague......maybe travel today isn't all that horrible after all.

Off to India

I'm off to India today, and will be gone until St. Patrick's day. I will try and blog while I'm away; check here once in a while to see what I'm up to!

Fifty Years

In case you've been wondering where I've been the past two weeks, I've been getting ready for my parents' 5Oth wedding anniversary.

Congratulations, Nick and Sonia!

I was put in charge (well, assigned) by my sister-in-law of flowers and entertainment. Well, not so much entertainment as the now obligatory (in my family at least) slide show retrospective of the couple's life. And, being the overachiever that I am, I figured this would be as good a time as any to fully digitize our family's photo archives.

I had no idea what I was getting myself in for. My mother has inherited my grandparents' and my uncle's photo albums, and my uncle was quite a shutterbug. So not only do I have lots and lots of photos, but I have many of them in (minimally) triplicate. And I have discovered that my micro-organizational skills do not come from my mother, who is wont to stick photos into albums "because there was an empty space there."

So while her albums are somewhat chronological, they really aren't. Add to that the fact that, sometime in the late 60s to mid 70s, many photofinishers quit dating snapshots. In the 90s the higher end ones put the dates on the backs of photos and on index prints. So I have some fifteen years worth of photos that I need to guess dates on--often by hair style or clothes being worn. Sometimes I can tell by the event being pictured, but I found that my mother no longer recalls what year they went to Alaska or when any of the cousins got married.

I scanned some 3000 photos before realizing I was in over my head. So I triaged. Old black and white--yeas. Newer color--pick a few representative ones. In the end I scanned some 5000+ photos. (I plan to do the rest later.)

So it's been a challenge.

I was up until 2 AM working on all of this, and then got up at 8 to put together the flower arrangements (sunflowers, statice and irises, courtesy of the local Costco).

Today I unveil the fruit of all this labor--my 25 minute, 350 slide Keynote (Powerpoint for Apple) presentation, with accompanying audio. Each of the slides has from 1 to 6 photos, so we're talking some 1200-1400 pictures. It should be fun.

And tonight I get to sleep........