Helping Hands Hospital

Helping Hands Hospital is where Keturah and I are now helping. I'm going to let Keturah explaine what we do and see as I am just the 'companion' as everyone calls be because I am not pre-med and have zero medical desire.

Ok so the hospital is...hard to describe?  If I had to imagine army hospitals out in the field it would be close to this...I think. It's just really not something you can explain. There are so many different factors including hygiene (obviously), environment, culture, etc. that make it unique and it's impossible to convey all of that accurately. 

Now that is my answer but I know that basically all of you aren't going to be satisfied with that. So here are some unique things I've noticed about the hospital. 

• Patient Privacy is not a thing. Dr. Gupta  (the main doctor who examines everyone as they first come in) will have one patient that he's looking at and during their examination five other people will come in and out of the room to talk to the doctor. Sometimes they just stay in their too, making little comments to both doctor and patient the whole time (to be clear these are not family and friends or staff, they're other patients). In the wards it's worse. They have at least six, sometimes more, beds in a room. Each patient has their own bed thankfully but then they have their family crammed in their too.  There are no dividers or curtains to block noise or curious eyes. For us it was terrible, for the Nepali people that is already part of the culture so it's whatever. 
• The lack of gloves on the nurses is driving me crazy. They do IVs and take blood without gloves and don't wash their hands in between patients. There does not seem to be a specific procedure for biowaste compared to regular garbage (although they have these cool machines that disintegrate the used needles). Bed sheets don't seem to be changed unless visibly soiled or unless it's a scheduled time to change them. It is...different for sure. 
• Apparently anesthesia is not always on hand. We had a man come into the ER with his thumb and pointer finger cut (his thumb was probably cut to the bone). Now I'm watching them clean the would and pull his thumb back way farther than it should ever be able to go, and I notice that the man is shaking. Because they didn't give him anything for pain and here they are pulling his thumb apart, I probably would've been screaming. So I get over that and decide that maybe they just haven't gotten to that part yet. Then the doctor explains to me that a tendon in the thumb was severed and that means it has shrunk back farther into the arm. He tells me that because he would have to make a rather incision to find the tendon and repair it they were not going to do the procedure at that hospital. I was a bit confused because I knew they did regular surgeries on a daily basis. He then explained that they didn't have any anesthesia. They told the man he could wait until five pm (this was happening probably around 11am) or go to a different hospital. I'm sure you can guess what he chose. But if they hadn't needed to recover the lost tendon they would have just fixed him up without painkillers so yeah, that would suck.

So there you go. The hospital right now is a combination of five different residential building, which obviously is not ideal. They have a new building that they will be moving to in two months or so. Hopefully having a building to actual match their objectives will help with the general conditions. A nicer building also means more higher pay grade patients, which means more money to pay more staff, which means lots of great improvements. 

The hospital is great, although it's different. They do a wonderful job considering the conditions they're in. And if you can't pay they still treat you so they are a real blessing to soooo many people. It is amazing to be part of such an organization. 

Jenessa

& Keturah, I tried to be less graphic (did it work?)