Thursday, May 29, 2008

Monday, May 26th, 2008 - Saiffee Hospital & Elvis



Melissa here to recount our Monday adventures in Mumbai.
We were up early and in professional attire for our 2nd trip to Saiffee Hospital, a private hospital which overlooks the water and has been described as pretty as a hotel. At night you can see the lights of Saiffee from Marine Drive, the Queen's Necklace.
Professional attire to us means those nice wool suits or poly blends in black. Now add 100 degree weather plus 80% humidity and see how well you do in black polyester. This is a recurrent theme since we saw Elvis later in the evening in polyester and leather.
The professional dress that we were met by were nice kurtas and saris on the women and suits and ties on the men (no jackets that I saw though)
We were at Saiffee from 9am until 4pm. They have a very lovely auditorium with a reception area were we had lunch and broke for morning tea. Yes, they even take morning and afternoon tea during the regular work day in the hospital. The physiotherapists were coming and going throughout the day and many of them wore labcoats.
To give you a rundown of events:
In the am - Dr. Writer, the head of the Nieere (I completely massacred the spelling of that hospital but I do not have her card on me. That spelling is more for pronunciation.) Hospital Physiotherapy program - the Hindustani equivalent to Dr. Jan Richardson; she spoke to the audience on vestibular rehabilitation and then had 2 of her students present 2 different case studies for the room to discuss. For both of the case studies the patients were present with family and walked in front of the room. 1 case was of a 52 year old man with a 2 year old stroke with definitive right sided foot drop and hip circumduction. He did not have an AFO or an assistive device and his complaints were of being unable to walk more normally especially to safely walk across the street. Having spent a week in Mumbai by this time, I understand the absolute necessity to be able to safely and quickly cross the street. The cabbies don't stop, just honk!
The second case was a man diagnosed 1 and 1/2 years previously with Parkinson's and the question to the group was about how to progress his treatment. One of the major things we learned from this case study is that the physios here take alot of psychological/ psychosocial data into account and specifically use tests and measures to quantify depression or other issues that may be present.
Dr. Chagla, the neurosurgeon that we had met at breakfast at the Bombay Gym on morning 1 in India, got up to speak about "Sharpening your axe" - keeping up to date on research to be a better clinician.
Then 2 of the physiotherapists at Saiffee got up to present on biomechanics of the patello femoral joint and treatments of patello-femoral pathologies, specifically arthritis.
Dr. Pispoti, a rheumatologist who connected with us when we first wandered the halls of Saiffee hospital and discovered that he and Dr. Jan Richardson were both members of the Rheumatological Association (again - most likely got that name wrong but it's late for me writing this). He spoke to the group about discovery of joint pathologies via physical examination findings. It helps to reinforce the role of the physio for observing the big picture and referring out when necessary.
The Dr. Reepa Shroff, an occupational therapist, gave us an overview on Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Sensory Integration for the paediatric population. As I am a paediatric physical therapist myself, I was especially intrigued by this topic. My favorite line of hers is that "the child is the director but every good film needs a screenwriter/ the therapist."
Then we broke for lunch and had typically Indian Cuisine. The a couple of people in our group decided that the dessert, a coconut type milk with a sweet bread floating in it, reminded us of a bowl of milk that fruit loops had sat in for a while - that sweet milk flavor.
I sat between 2 very nice physios and we chatted. I have been continually amazed at how different the English language sounds from different parts of the world. I am sure that we, on both sides of the conversation, asked each other to repeat ourselves multiple times.

After lunch was our turn to present. Dr. Rachel Beck and Dr. Brienne Thorusen spoke on Evidence Based Practice. Dr. Michael Tamaddoni, Dr. V. Claire Maranto and myself spoke on the treatment of children with Cerebral Palsy in the United States, and Dr. Kim Elzinga, Dr. Chris Moldan, and Dr. June Lohner spoke about a Low Back Classification System as per Delitto et al.
I think the presentations went over well, especially since I got multiple email addresses with requests to send them our powerpoints and more information on other various topics.
Lastly, we were provided a tour of the rehabilitation facilites, the entire 9th floor of Saiffee. 2 things of note that we thought were particularly interesting was an electromagnetic bed for arthritis and also a CPM (Continuous Passive Motion machine) for the upper extremity.
That evening, we headed to meet Amar Hocksar and the Mathurs for a night at CCI (Cricket Club of India) with dinner an an Elvis Impersonator.
It was a very fun time in which we ate a mix of italian and lebanese cuisine and then danced to Elvis tunes.
The impersonator was very good vocally and in appearance (a younger version of Elvis in physique) but as Mike noted, his hips were just not right. Might have been because of trying to squeeze in black leather pants in Mumbai in the summer for an outdoors concert. He sang all the classics though, Love me Tender, Jailhouse Rock, and Teddy Bear. The group of us plus a small handful of the other patrons got up to dance to the King. We had a great time and I thought I had never sweated more until we got to Goa.
Of note, Kara Richardson, "swooned" when Elvis threw his scarf at her. Then she, as well as I and a few others of our party got our picture with him!
Last detail of the day - Happy Birthday Shefali! She turned 25 on this day and we went after Elvis to the Mathurs home to sing her birthday wishes and to have lime soda and mango and coconut ice cream in her honor. We were sad not to have Shef there especially on her birthday, but she was in our thoughts as we ate some of the most amazing ice cream ever. I highly recommend Mumbai in mango season.
Well it was a busy but fufilling Monday in Mumbai.

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