Surgery and Healing in the Developing World - Dartmouth-Hitchcock

CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 46
Field Notes on the Clinical, Public Health,
Geographic, and Political Features of a
Typical Day in a Himalayan Medical
Mission
Glenn W. Geelhoed
Day Two at the Thicksay Gompa Clinic with the Public
Health Programs for School Children in Addition to the 160
Patient Clinic followed by the Exciting Excursion to as High
as Anyone Can Go by Road on Earth Anywhere: 18,380
Foot Khardumgla, the Karakorum Pass, July 22, 2000
Field notes from a typical day on a Himalayan medical mission have been picked,
nearly at random, to reflect the kind of day-to-day activities of a medical mission,
and our thinking about them as they happen. One of the most routine parts of any
scheduled clinic is the unpredictable, with rapid learning being a component part
for the beginning students and the experienced leader alike.
I had led a group of medical student s and residents on a trek into Ladakh, “The
Kingdom in the Clouds” of Himalayan India. We had scheduled our first clinics in
Thicksay Gompa, a district health center within the Buddhist Monastery near Lei,
Ladakh’s capital. The opening ceremony, deployment of students and supervisors in
several clinic rooms with translator’s and a centralized pharmacy for our drug dispensing
had been accomplishment on the first day, and both the clinic staff and the
waiting patients in the registration queue had some idea of what to expect in this
process.
A group got up for an early departure to go to the Thicksay Gompa, allegedly in
time for the 6:00 AM prayers by the monks. I had just come from a gompa at the
Leh Palace, and had heard the mantra in many other monasteries, most notably the
one at the Everest Trek route where Tensing Norgay’s son had stopped for his prayers
before summiting Everest on the David Brashear’s IMAX film “Everest”. So, while
the students went to hear the morning prayers chanted by the monks, I got an early
start in organizing the clinic—an event witnessed by the prospective patients in the
community, so that they came running to be early in the queue.
So, we hit the ground running. This time we rotated teams a bit, with my own
coverage still over Elizabeth Yellen and Amy Hayes in one room, but John Sutter
had gone to be supervised by the local clinic director Dr. Ahmed Patoo, and I would
wait for his call as a consultant to his room, and Sonia Szylck had asked that I be her
Surgery and Healing in the Developing World, edited by Glenn Geelhoed.
©2005 Landes Bioscience.