Medical Day

"Good medicine treats an individual, not merely a disease."

~ Hippocrates

Medical Day is a very special, and emotionally spiritual day.  On a typical medical day we head to the colonies to perform ulcer care for the leprosy patients.  We set up an area, usually in a home of one of the patients with different booths. First off they come in and grab their file and have their blood pressure measured, sometimes that will include their blood sugar level. Once they have been checked by the doctor who will prescribe any needed medicine, access their conditions and update their file, the patients come to our other designated areas to take care of their ulcers which is usually found on their feet.  First booth: their bandages (if they have any) get cut off and their toe nails get clipped. Second booth: their feet and ulcers get washed and scrubbed with soapy water. Third booth: Oil gets applied to their dry skin around the ulcer and along their feet and legs.  Fourth booth: a nurse cuts off the necrotic tissue and applies a balm to the ulcer. A volunteer assistant then bandages up the ulcer.  

Some patients are very sensitive to the pain of the ulcer and even the slightest touch can bring on tears of pain, others on the other hand hardly notice the nurse digging into their ulcers to cut away the dead tissue.  The fact that some patients feel pain is a good sign that they haven't completely lost the nerve tissue in the area of the ulcer.  The lack of pain is the main reason most of these ulcers occur; because, without pain being a warning sign to them that something is wrong they continue to walk on a wound making it worse or they don't shift from a pressure point like we would when things get uncomfortable thus creating a worse condition for their ulcer.

However, more important than the medical care that we treat these patients with, the greatest healing we can do is to provide a great degree of love and respect to these individuals who have been rejected from society.  We had one patient come in who was the grandmother of one of the students here at the Peery Matriculation School.  She was full of energy and presented herself at the door with a loud, high pitched, "Vanakum" which is a greeting in Tamil.  I had the opportunity to put oil on her feet and legs.  When I was finished she took her two hands which were missing fingers and took them to her lips and kissed them and then touched my cheeks with her hands as a way to say thank you and express her love for us volunteers.  We then exchanged I love you's in both Tamil and English.  It was a tender moment that allowed me to truly understand that more than washing their feet and putting oil on their legs, the love we share as fellow human beings is the most important service we can share.