road rage and festy feet

NZ crew at the ashram-Sharlene and Scotts last night. Jake me and Jenny with the Woolstons

Munched foot guy after dressing was first taken down.

Venod sitting in his brand new wheelchair watching the fireworks!

Diwali festival lights at the kids house

Jake playing cricket out the back of the ashram with the local kids.

It has been an eventful week! Firstly we had the Diwali festival on Saturday...this is where all the indians go crazy with fireworks and lights and THEE loudest sounding firecrackers you can get....I was walking down the local market street and one of these went off beside me-thought I had just been shot at! Crazy kids! We celebrated at the ashram with all the volunteers pitching in to get fireworks...let them off that night with not the most safety savvy patients iv met! There was alot of screaming and cheering going on. Good times!

Another bit of cool news is Venod who I talked about last blog got given a brand spanking new wheelchair! Yay!! He is getting up in it for about an hour each day.

Jake had taken an ambulance load of paraplegics/amputee's down to south Delhi to a Spinal Hospital. Here the management told Jake that they would supply us at the ashram with 7 BRAND new wheelchairs for free...AND will fit and supply all our patients in need of limbs with FREE prosthetics! So stoked!

Be so good to get these patients back on their feet with new limbs so they can get intergrated back into the community.

On another day Jake picked up a guy who was sitting outside a local governement hospital-he had been sitting there for 3 days with bandages to his head, arms and foot. He is a pick pocket and a drug addict from delhi. While pickpocketing on a train he either jumped to escape or was pushed onto the tracks sustaining injuries. After going to this hospital he was either discharged or simply walked out (possibly to get high again).

Jake bought him back to the ashram where he was washed, and given clean clothes. The dressings to his head and arm were taken down and was just minor stitches and scrapes.

Then we took down his foot dressing.......The stench was awful and revealed half his foot missing, the tissue to the bottom of his foot was extensivly damaged and showed all his tendons.

Half the top of his foot was also missing. The guy was in alot of pain and was running a high grade fever.

We took him back to this hospital straight away as he was heading into septic shock. The hospital turned us away after taking a quick glance to say this was "not an emergency case".

Shesh it was hard to keep polite! With a background in plastics nursing I knew he needed months worth of procedures that did not have a very good chance of healing. We returned 2 days later as requested for a second opinion which by this time the foot had become gangrenous and was amputated.

Driving the ambulance back from this hospital in the crazy delhi rush hour traffic sounded like a good challenge to me at the time so I jumped in and started driving.....About half an hour from the ashram I had a crazy driver pull up next to me, then try for the next 20 minutes to run me off the road. I had 3 sick patients, plus two other nurses from the clinic with me and I honestly thought I was going to crash and kill the people in my truck! Everyone was screaming and I was trying to stay on the road while the crazy driver in front swerved back and forth in front of me trying to land us in the ditch. We finally stopped and the police were all of sudden there-there was alot of yelling going on! We found out the guy was drunk and had taken it upon himself to try and stop our truck and take a photo of us as he thought we were using the ambulance for fun and didnt have any patients. MENTAL!!! The police were shinning their torches in my eyes and then in the back to see the sick patients. The police finally said we could go, so I had to try and get my legs to stop shaking enough to get my foot on the accelerator.

Hahaha just another day in paradise.

Other than than that we are both well...No delhi belly yet! Will keep you posted though dont you worry. Weather has cooled down so is really good. Warm days with cool nights. Perfect.

Scott and Sharlene and kids have left the ashram and fly out tonight-they have made sucha huge impact here and there was alot of sad goodbyes and tears from both the staff and the patients.

Gotta run-another curry awaits!