Note: This post was originally published on July 7th, 2013.
My Volunteer Experience
This past Friday, I was able to begin a hospital visitation program at King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital, in Raasta Peth Pune, Maharashtra. This is a large, Non-Government Owned private teaching hospital. Immediately as I entered the 550-bed institution, I saw crowds scattered throughout. There really isn’t any “uncrowded” place in India. Seeing KEM Hospital this past Friday (and Saturday) was a new experience for me. When imagining a health clinic or hospital, especially one as large-scale as the KEM Hospital, one doesn’t imagine an airy, open, humid, crowded & dusty institution, with hundreds of ill individuals, children, and crowds filling the space. Yet, this is what one of the largest and best Maharashtrian Hospitals looks like.
When I entered the NICU Unit, where I was to meet Dr. Vaidya, my direct supervisor for this program, I couldn’t predict how I would react to such a dire situation. As I stepped into the sanitized, dust-free, room, a weird smell, a mix of formaldehyde and bleach met me. My eyes spun around the room, seeing tiny, helpless, almost-plastic-looking creatures- babies who had recently been brought into a world full of intensive care machines, white-jacketed physicians, prescription medications. Their tiny glassy eyes had only seen the gray scale of the hospital room, and experienced a shock seemingly to great for their small bodies to bear.
Internally, for a moment, I gasped, the scene was too much to take in, and I felt suffocated, despite the fact that I was the one observing. For some time, I concentrated on the marble tiled flooring, hoping that it would shield my sight from what was around me- but it didn’t. Minutes later, I finally glanced upward, my gaze falling on a small infant, smothered in clear tubes, wires, units and pads. I’m not sure how I will cope with the NICU, but my first impression was not what I had expected it to be. Dr. Vaidya told me, minutes into registration, that the world is full of injustices, and I’ll be able to learn about them, over the next few weeks at KEM.
