Vinayaka Hospital - Karaikal, India: Wednesday, January 28

Gray troops of clouds marching in from the Bay of Bengal dumped cooling torrents of rain on the Coramandel Coast this morning, mercifully breaking the heat of the past few days. In the muddied streets of Karaikal, women hurrying for shelter gathered sodden saris into headscarves and men lifted dhotis as they stepped over the puddles.

Ganesh – Lord Vinayaka, and Commander of the troops of Shiva – stood guard over the entranceway of Vinayaka Hospital. The God of auspicious undertakings sat serene in the hospital lobby as attendants mopped the floors, placing burlap sacks at doorways for wiping visitors’ feet. The first week of the Rotaplast visit was racking up results.

SCORECARD TO DATE
(values at US rates of donated medical services, excluding hospital costs and supplies)

Eight-year old Saranaya Murugan from the far off village of Puolur was just waking up in the recovery room. Her face was bandaged over and her mother hovered by the child’s bedside. When her daughter was just nine days old, a kerosene lamp exploded, searing the infant’s face and arms. Contracting scar tissue had distorted one eye and pulled her nose out of whack (for a pre-op photo of her, click on January 27).

Word spread by local Rotary volunteers about the Rotaplast team coming to Karaikal led them on a costly, exhausting bus trip to the hospital. Yesterday, Dr. Mel Spira cut away thick bands of scar tissue and now, even with the bandages, you could see she was going to see normally for the first time in her young life. While the scars would never be healed entirely, mother and daughter could face the world with new expectations. “I want her to have an education,” said the mom, whose husband cleans trucks for a living. “I hope for her to have a long life and to get married.”

In the next bed, Kauveri Rajendran from Pondicherry also wore a face bandage. The twenty-seven year old milk vendor was walking home from work on August 26, 2003 at 7:00 PM when unknown assailants leapt from the bushes by the roadside and splashed her face with acid (according to her neatly typed police statement that she showed me). She suspects people who’d lent her money were making a cruel collection.

Her injuries were affecting her family life. She said her three children were afraid to look at her. She’d already spent 1 lakh (100,000 rupees) on plastic surgery at a private clinic, but couldn’t afford to seek any more care. Now, after surgery, she was feeling upbeat. Her son, a frisky sixth grader at Immaculate Heart School in Pondy who was bouncing a balloon all over the ward, said he was happy for his mom.

On the other side of the ward, the boy with the terrible burns was reading one of the “Get Well” cards sent by the kids at Shiloh Elementary School in New Jersey. Brought over by Dr. David Rosenberg from his son Michael’s school, those cards were all over the walls of the wards and – even if they couldn’t quite read the words - the recovering patients got the message.

Rod Covington watched the scene from the doorway and agreed that the boy with the burns was a pretty cool kid. The Rotaplast volunteer had given him a balloon and he had insisted on another balloon for the acid victim’s son.

Covington, husband of Rotaplast veteran nurse Deb Covington, is on his second mission. The Napa Valley winery manager is in charge of the autoclave. Teamed with Lydia Tal, they receive trays of bloodied surgical instruments from the OR and sterilize them.

The blood – often carrying hepatitis and HIV (India has one of the world’s highest incidences of HIV infection) – turns these sharp implements into deadly weapons. Rod wears gloves as he assembles the tools in a prescribed order on metal trays and feeds them into the Tuttnauer autoclave. The machine shoots out a twenty-minute blast of super-heated steam. Clean tools are returned to the OR where the nurses place them on the surgical table - needleholders, forceps, Dingman retractors, clamps, palate elevators, knife handles, “Metzenbums”and “Mayos” (types of scissors named for their inventor and the famous clinic, respectively) - in an order peculiar to each surgeon.

The whole autoclave business is matter of timing, Rod figures. The tools have to be in and out and ready for each surgery. “It’s like trying to fit four pig into three holes.”

As we leave the hospital at the end of the day, we stop by the ward where twenty-eight year old Ganthimithy Kodamathy (see yesterday) is resting. She’s looking good, but tired. Still not ready for her closeup, she manages a little wave hello.

The sun is out. Ganesh rules.

Rex Weiner
Wayne Schoenfeld