Jewels of India – Mother Teresa and her sisters

When I arrived in Calcutta it was early June and the monsoon season hadn’t started yet.  That meant the air was thick and hazy blue with humidity on diesel.

 

I looked out the cab window, amazed at the India before me.  Never had I seen so many people – hoards of humanity.  Animals too seemed everywhere – boney cows, scruffy chickens, flea-bitten street dogs, dirty naked children.

 

Rickety cars, scooters, bicycles, push-carts, and other wheeled contraptions weasled through the streets.  In my weakly air conditioned cab, I could take it all in.

I’d be staying here for a month, after thumbing through a book called ‘Volunteer Vacations’ and deciding to work with Mother Teresa’s organization – the Sisters of Charity.  I was attracted by the description in the book – simply ‘show up and begin work’ with address of the Mother House.

 

Many of the other entries for ‘volunteer vacations’ had some sort of application, screening process or skills needed.  I liked Mother Teresa’s approach – simple, direct and no talents required.  She would take anybody who had a desire to help.  Her winning of the Nobel Prize led me to believe this would be an authentic experience.  I didn’t really expect this to be a vacation at all.

The story of Rose, AIDS survivor

I just had lunch the other day with ‘Rose’, one of my AIDS patients.  It was the greatest thing, to see her – just like a ‘normal’ person. 

Who would believe that just last year, Rose nearly died from a terrible opportunistic infection called ‘Cryptococcus’. 

When Rose came into the hospital, she was thin, wasted and very weak.  She had been having fevers for sometime.  AIDS had been ravaging her immune system and without those defenses, she was extremely susceptible to infection.  Certain types of infections tend to occur in advanced AIDS, and she was now fighting a battle with Cryptococcus neoformans, a nasty fungus.  By the time she came in, this fungus was ‘everywhere’ – it was growing out of her blood. 

We put her on the most powerful medicine we could – amphotericin, or ‘ampho-terrible’.  It was a difficult medicine to take, especially for someone so sick.  Her blood levels dropped to less than half of what they should have been, her electrolytes were profoundly deranged , she felt weak and feverish.  There weren’t any options though – we had no choice but to try and treat her, or face certain death. 

Rabies and the miracle of ‘Starfish’ palliative care

I was back in Manila, headed towards San Lazaro hospital, a veritable mecca for Infectious Diseases in the Philippines.

 

Stepping down onto the platform of the LRT (Light Rail Transit) into a throng of people, the thick humid air  descended on me immediately.  The steam bath was oppressive.  I pushed through the crowds, cringing as the train screeched away.

 

I worked my way through the turnstiles, passing a gaggle of beggars dressed in rags with dirty, tousseled hair.  Mostly young children, four, five years old.  What a future…  Motorcycles sputtered by like annoying kazoos.  Sometimes 4 or more people were seen variously packed onto these bikes.  How they ever didn’t fall off, I wasn’t sure.

 

Hulking shiny metal jeepneys, brightly hand painted, revved up and down the roads.  Filthy soot belching from their exhaust pipes.  Most of the female passengers held handkerchiefs to their faces to limit the particulate inhalations.  Ten, twenty, maybe even more passengers were crammed into the back.  Hundreds of children in school uniforms, everywhere, walking linked together at the arm.

 

I looked up at crowded houses and shops, laundry-lines criss-crossing the skies.  Webs of hundreds of wires interconnecting everything – it was an electricians worst nightmare.

 

This was my new home for the next month, and I just loved it.  Despite the outward appearances of an over urbanized mega-metropolis, the human heartbeat of Manila was palpable all around….