To work.

So, there we were stranded at the Leh military airport. But, it was all good. We knew name of the doctor who was working with us at the Sonam Norboo Memorial Hospital (SNM). As has been the case with everyone we have met in India, people were very generous in helping us out by calling people they knew as well as the hospital in order to try and straighten things out. In the end, we hopped a cab to the hospital, where we wandered around until we managed to find someone who knew the where abouts of Dr. Iqbal. He is a great guy, very friendly and enthusiastic and did not seem phased that we had barged in on his seeing patients and he soon had a ride coming for us to take us to the guest house, where we meet up with the rest of the team.
We spent the first day in Leh, lying around acclimatizing. One of our team was having a hard time with the altitude and I was glad that I had taken Diamox. Even so, it is amazing how much it impacts you. My face and hands were constantly tingling and to climb the one flight of stairs made me feel like I had been downing two packs a day for 20-plus years. Next day was not much better, but we managed a walk of about a kilometer and a trip to the hospital by cab for our meeting with the Chief Medical Officer and other staff.
The hospital is an interesting place; busy and quirky. They wash down the floors with diesel, which is apparently pretty common in a lot of countries, but I found the fumes nauseating. The door bell to enter the offices of the CMO plays the ‘Wish you a merry Christmas’ jingle. I couldn’t figure out where the tune was coming from and, against the formality of the meeting, it was pretty strange. We toured the pediatric rehabilitation ward on which we will be working for most of the time we are here. It was partially completed, with bits of old equipment and stuff still in boxes. Job one: organizing and tidying. We were able to see some issues with the way the unit was designed and start to offer some suggestions, but Dolma, the physiotherapist who works on the unit, was already way ahead.
Dolma and the rehab assistant, Ditchun, are awesome. Very knowledgeable and passionate about what they do, and pragmatic about the system they work in. It has taken years to get the unit to the point where it is, and yet is still not open to patients. When something does move forward, how it moves seems to be on the opinion of someone in Delhi, rather than that of Dolma and Ditchen. Dolma doesn’t appear to back down too much to the authority of the doctors, speaking her mind, but always laughing and smiling. It will be a great opportunity to work with them and I am sure I’ll learn a lot from them.
The day following the meeting, some of the team headed back down to the hospital to help get the unit in order. When we got there, a lot of cleaning up had already taken place. The plan is that we will be doing mass assessments in a couple of weeks; a radio announcement has gone out throughout Ladakh to inform parents to bring their disabled children in three days a week for the remainder of the month. It was a productive day, and we managed to make lots of changes and negotiate solutions. Dr Iqbal had a big list of tasks made and while we were there, the changes were well underway.
Now, I am off to buy some clothes as all my stuff is dirty and we are heading on our first village outreach tomorrow. We will be gone for about a week, so reporting in may be difficult, but it should be awesome, and the primary reason I first wanted to come to Ladakh.