I\u2019ve been dying to share some things with you. It seems way too long since I last wrote. A lot has happened in the past week or so. I went out to see what the community health programs are doing. One group teaches midwives safer practices, a skill here that\u2019s passed down generationally with no formal training.\u00a0 I think maybe I told you about this already, but women are so ignorant about deliveries.\u00a0 It\u2019s a really good target to reduce maternal deaths.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a physical therapy team and these guys are so cute!\u00a0 They\u2019ve trained two or three guys on exercises to do with disabled kids and they go out on their motorbikes to visit each kid weekly.\u00a0 The families are generally very receptive.\u00a0 It\u2019s really important to motivate the family to take interest in their kids; otherwise, it just doesn\u2019t work. On my last trip to the community I remember the last two houses clearly. The first was such a cute baby!\u00a0 Dipa.\u00a0 She\u2019s a cerebral palsy patient. Once they started coming out and made some progress with her the family got so excited.\u00a0 When I was there, the grandpa came running and couldn\u2019t wait to show us that she could stand by herself.\u00a0 They work with her every day and are so proud of her.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t wait to find a connection that worked so I could write home about the poster child for physical therapy success.\u00a0 Then I got to the next house.\u00a0 The girl that we had come to visit died four days before.\u00a0 I stood there like a total intruder, a foreigner in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even if I\u2019d known the language, I wouldn\u2019t have known what to say. I wanted to cry with them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I spent the first part of this week in OB\/GYN.\u00a0 One patient that came in a\u00a0few days ago is still haunting me.\u00a0 Asha Devi (everyone here is either a\u00a0Devi or a Khatoon).\u00a0 Anyway, she\u2019s 20 years old, married, 30 weeks pregnant with her husband\u2019s child, and her chart reads, in broken English, \u2018wants to abortion\u2019.\u00a0 Dr. Anand counseled her for a long time and gave her a track about Christianity.\u00a0 She cried and cried.\u00a0 It was obvious that she doesn\u2019t want an abortion.\u00a0 I learned something new about the culture here. Girls are married off as early as 13, but they don\u2019t join their husbands until later; they continue to live with their families for some time.\u00a0 When they do come together, there\u2019s a ceremony and until then they are not supposed to consumate the marriage.\u00a0 They hadn\u2019t had their ceremony yet.\u00a0 It\u2019s so sad. She\u2019s so far a long. \u00a0 The next president of India may be a woman. Things may be changing for the better!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now that I\u2019ve written a novel for you, it hit me yesterday that I\u2019ll be\u00a0coming home soon.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to miss Raxaul.\u00a0 At the same time, I\u2019m really excited to come home again with a new appreciation for the things I\u2019ve taken for granted.\u00a0 Even here, I think I take things for granted, like electricity and food and showers and toilets, things that aren\u2019t an issue for us in the hospital compound, but are hard to come by on the outside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve been dying to share some things with you. It seems way too long since I last wrote. A lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/jenniferhicks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/jenniferhicks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/jenniferhicks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/jenniferhicks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/jenniferhicks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/jenniferhicks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/jenniferhicks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/jenniferhicks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/jenniferhicks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}