June 4th: Last Day in Nagpur

With Amarappali and Shruti

             It was a bittersweet day. We had definitely enjoyed our time in Nagpur but we were ready to get away from the heat. We spent the last day in the hospital. I really needed to get my some updated data for the paper that I am working on with Dr. Krish. Dr. Jain has over a 1000 sickle cell patients that she cares for at the hospital and we are trying to look at all the clinical events of these patients to see if we can determine what symptoms are more common in Sickle cell patients in India. Literature states that Sickle Cell Disease is mild in India but Dr. Jain’s data shows that in the predominantly non-tribal population the disease is actually very severe and there are certain co-morbidities that we see in the Indian population but not in the African-American population in the States. The paper and information is super interesting but the data is a huge mess and I’ve been trying to sort it out for almost an entire year but coming here has helped because I can sit down with Sanjeewani, Amol, and Sheetal and get the information from them directly instead of trying to guess their thought process from the States. We basically spent all afternoon going through paper medical records trying to get missing information.

            After the hospital today we had been invited to Dr. Shrikhande’s house for dinner. Along the way we stopped to pick up our clothes :-D Pics below. But back to Dr. Shrikhande. Her house was amazing!!!! Omg. I wish I could have taken a picture of it but it was too dark but wow. Her house was huge and she had a huge garden and even a small little temple. We had yet another dinner where people tried to stuff more food than we eat but everything was delicious. We couldn’t stay long because our flight was early the next morning and we still had to pack our clothes and Dr. Jain and I still had to go over more data.

Dr. Jain tying the Akshaya's Chaniya Choli

After we got back to the house we had a little fashion show and tried on the new clothes to make sure that all the blouses fit. I love the saris that I bought but I have idea when or where I’m going to be able to wear them.

So I definitely am not the expert on tying saris but I did the best I could so you can get an idea of the pattern. There's one more that's not on here but it was a green/red/pink mix :P

The first white sari that I bought

Bandhani Patterned Sari

The Sari with the elephants on the border

All in all it has been a great and successful trip to Nagpur. Next time I decide to come here it will definitely be in Nagpur’s winter months and not in May/June.