Nice birthday – parents and parents-in-law at home, buffet dinner yesterday, special cake, plenty of phonecalls, FB messages, orkut scraps, SMS… and then… lone pediatrician at the hospital, 50 patients in OPD, 5 kids with seizures, a twin delivery, acting anesthetist for an ortho procedure, on call, 2 kids post-op and 2 kids planned for surgery…. loving it! It can’t get more exciting, right!

– Parents watch eight month month old child play with a toy phone from a distance.– Child slams the phone and breaks it.– Parents recover most of it including a battery.– The night is uneventful.– In the morning they discovered 2 more discolored batteries – when the baby poops! This child was very lucky that he also had a diarrhea and the batteries came out before they could cause any damage to his gut!This was the perfect recipe for disaster – a toy with small parts in the hands on an infant. Not everyone ends up as lucky as this child! As you can see the two swallowed batteries were quite discolored and almost rusty!

Just like the dozens of times before Harini came smiling and bubbly to OPD. This time however she was in her school uniform as she had come straight to the OPD after an exam. She made a little fuss as we took her to the treatment and winced as I poked her hand for the IV line. She sat and smiled as I slowly injected the medicine and then some saline to flush and she was ready to go back.It was then that I noticed the smart badge on her uniform which said Class Captain.Nothing very unusual – until you realise that Harini is being treated for Acute Leukemia (Blood Cancer) and today is her last injection. She was diagnosed…

As you know Swine Flu has been making headlines all over the world. The news channels and newspapers are going overboard as they try to use the little they know to increase their TRPs and come out on top.Today we had a taste of how blasphemously inaccurate and blatantly false even top newspapers are. We saw this article about a child called Tharika. you can click on the clipping enclosed to read the full articleVery emotional article! The only problem is that there is absolutely no truth at all. How do I know? Tharika is my patient and i am treating her (along with Praburam). Here are the facts:1. She was admitted with fever on the 11th and not the…

A very enthusiastic and helpful child I saw in my clinic the other day – wanted to help me examine himself! So there he is – grabbing my stethoscope and placing it in the right places!Left me wondering – do you really need to go to Medical College to learn how to examine patients?

These local Tshirt companies don;t have any idea what they are printing! Most of the time the children I see in OPD have some gibberish written on their Tshirt – half of it unreadable or making no sense at all with lots of typos etc.I was surprised when this 3 year old child landed up in OPD with this Tshirt advising safe driving tips! I don’t think he had any idea what it said and probably could never drive a truck – but hey! It’s never too young to spread the message!Click on the image for a larger view, but if you still can’t read it here’s what it says:“I will drive a maxi truck.Stop.Drive Slowly.Look Signal.Be Careful.Blow Horn.”I can’t…

I’ve written a brief intro to Grace and her baby here on A2J before.Today the baby is 9 months old and the transformation is almost unbelievable. I’m enclosing a picture to show you the difference. Its amazing the way the baby has grown and is now bubbly and quite naughty – weighing about 8 kg now (quite a change from the 800 grams at birth!). Don’t miss out the happy family in the foreground and my colorful OPD in the background in this pic.

K had a nightmare of a time. She came to our hospital with an undiagnosed fever and during her stay delivered a preterm baby. K had to be shifted to CMC to sort out her fever and the baby struggled to survive in our nursery. She had mild HMD and needed CPAP (oxygen under pressure). Just when her tiny lungs seemed to have recovered she blew a pneumothorax – a hole in her lungs that caused air to leak into her chest. I quickly put in a chest tube and luckily she improved. A few days later the tube was removed and she was started on nasogastric feeds. All seemed well till one day I noticed she seemed to be…

We treat patients who have all kinds of backgrounds. Today we admitted a boy with suspected Dengue fever who was a little sick. He needed a few blood transfusions and a lot of monitoring. His father was a political worker from the Municipality office and wanted a guarantee that the treatment would be successful. Unfortunately I could only tell him the truth – that there was a possible danger to life. He didn’t seem happy about it. Out of the blue i found that he was a close friend to G annan and this made him feel better as G annan knows us well. While the father was convinced some of his friends were unfortunately goondas and they were overheard…

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.