T minus 2 weeks

Vanakkam, Hello! Welcome to our blog. David and I are about to set off on a 6-week journey to India where we will be studying at the Christian Medical College, Vellore (Read the CMC wikipedia article here). The hospital is one of the largest in the world and was founded by the Weill Cornell Medical College graduate, Ida Scudder. David will be doing a medicine rotation at the hospital, which will be a great opportunity for him to see how patients are cared for without the expenses we see in the US. I will be shadowing on the oncology service, which will allow me to see how cancer is treated in a developing country. There was a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine regarding the hurdles developing countries face granting patients access to morphine and other palliative care medications ("Painful Inequities- Palliative Care in Developing Countries"). I am really interested to see how CMC deals with these problems and what role palliation plays in cancer treatment in India.

We have just over two weeks until our departure, but most of our logistical preparations are done. We managed to survive the visa process, which included scrambling together passport pictures at 5:30 am the day of our appointment, as well as our immunizations: Hep A, tetanus, polio booster and typhoid. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of a typhoid vaccine, imagine your arm being bludgeoned by a Hagrid-sized troll with a club the size of a tree trunk. It's sort of like that. Except then you get three more shots in the same arm.

We will try to update our blog as much as possible, which will depend on our internet connection as well as our ability to find creative things to say. Some posts will be medical or educational in nature, some will be about our experiences, and I am sure some will be delirious ramblings of our "Delhi belly"- infected selves.

We will post again before we leave, but in the meantime here is a short clip about the hospital and its mission: 

Cheers!

Moriah