You can read the story of Balaji in these two blog entries.Entry 1Entry 2Its been well over a year now and Balaji is doing extremely well. He popped into OPD today with a cold and it was great seeing him play around, pulling at the toys, wishing me, saying his name and attempting to say a nursery rhyme! This is one of the best parts of being a doctor – seeing a child recover from near death and then coma back healthy!!You can see a video of Balaji here.

This is one of the best perk in being a doctor – when you get a thank you note from one of your patients. And when the thank you note is attached to a large pineapple cream cake, the joy is enormous. Ananthara came to us more than a year ago for a simple check up when I found out she also had delayed developmental milestones and a squint. Since then she has made immense progress and the mother has been faithfully bringing her for therapy and they have made a couple of visits to CMC.Today was her second birthday and she came and gave us this beautiful (and delicious) cake.Incidents like these really encourage me to continue to be…

Although I was on duty on Jan 1st we managed to go to church in the morning. The speaker was Freddy Joseph (I’ve already blogged about him a couple of times).For the sermon he had chosen the story of Jesus calming the storm while his disciples were in the ship.One of the highlights of his message was his thoughts on this verseThe men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”He said, ” You can see the waves but cannot see the wind. Both of these obeyed Jesus – Jesus had control over both these elements. Similarly in our lives Jesus has control over the seen and unseen problems in…

Trichy is not as boring as you think it is. It has some neat places you can hang out in. I thought I’ll blog about a few of these places once in a while.Christmas is just round the corner and a good Christian bookstore is a boon for some shopping.OM bookhouse near Puthur junction is a great place for some Christian shopping. It’s right opposite KMC hospital, but is tucked in a little so you may miss it. The place is not very large but well maintained, clean and the stuff is neatly arranged. Its got a HUGE collection of books, LOTS of music and some art, wall hangings, keychains etc. We had a pretty good time browsing through the…

Sangeetha’s baby was a extremely preterm baby with respiratory distress syndrome.Within 2 hours of age it was clear she was going to worsen and hence we decided to ventilate her and give her survanta – a special medicine given directly to her lungs. The survanta is 8 milliliters, is given in 5 minutes and costs a whopping 10000 indian rupees. Thankfully she did well after that and within a few days was off the ventilator. After carefully nursing her and letting her feed, today finally she was fit enough to go home. Her total bill including the ICU stay and the ventilation came to about Rs. 20000. Add the survanta charges and what was spent was about 750 US $……

One of the biggest blessings in my pediatric OPD are the cartoons, puppets and colorful pictures in it.I’d blogged about the transformation of the Pediatric OPD about a year ago.Everyday its amazing how children grab the toys, stare around in awe and squeal with joy. Of course there are still those who bawl and bawl and shed a liter of tears!This short mobile video clip shows a child with a chest infection having fun in the OPD. Apologies for the poor quality of the video and the glaring window in the background – you can still see the childs glowing face!

Saw this note on a car in Trichy (Click the image for a larger pic)It shows an advocate/lawyer symbole (which means that the driver was a lawyer), below which is a bold logo that states “DICTATOR”. My interpretation?I always thought that for a lawyer the Law was his word.This lawyer tipped it around – His WORD is now the LAW!Howzzat @ Trichy!

I finally got my Permanent 4-wheeler driving license today. Getting the license was not difficult – a couple of months ago I got my learners license after enrolling at a driving school and signing a few forms. Today, along with a few others from the driving school I drove down to the RTO office 10 km away and managed to finish off the formalities and the driving test.This was another day that God showed in subtle ways how much he cared.For one, a person who had come last week told me that the crowd the previous week was a lot and the queues were much longer.Also, the tests are conducted in the open – and in the even of rain…

We’d given in the car to do the repair work and spent the week using the Kinetic Honda. Unfortunately the work couldn’t be finished by the weekend and that meant the weekend without the car – and a wedding to attend 10 miles away! The service center promised to send a car for our use for the weekend and saturday saw us with a UVA – their test car.Pretty cool eh?Even cooler if you realised that the car had a huge gorilla painted on the sides (as a part of their ‘Incredibly Spacious’ ad!).It was fun – and funny. Everywhere we stopped kids jumped in glee while others gave us a wide grin. No harm done. We attended the wedding…

Ever been to one of those fancy weighing machines in railway stations that tell you more than just your weight? At the railway station I was kinda ‘led’ into checking out my weight in one of these ‘enlightening’ machines.This one spews out a card with your weight, a character analysis and a filmstars picture. So what did mine show?You are shy, patient, sensitive and tender.I almost fell off in shock!And the filmstar? Salman Khan – I could feel my biceps bulge underneath my shirt sleeve!!We laughed about this the whole way back home.And my weight – you really thought I’d blog it??!!