Rosemarie Pichler joined our team of Austrian Doctors immediately after her retirement.
We are very happy about that! Resident in Vienna but more at home in the world, she was on her first assignment in Calcutta, India. She had a practice as a pulmonologist in Weiz, Styria, for over 30 years. The leap from her own surgery to the somewhat simpler slum practices is a huge one!
Here, Dr. Rosemarie, as she is known locally, tells us what happened to her:
“The first assignment in Calcutta is behind me.
Emotions are on a rollercoaster, thoughts are running riot… A state that persists even 8 days after returning home.
Many things will be similar for many people before their first assignment and are therefore not worth reporting on because they have already been described many times. The increasingly queasy feeling before departure, the unknown, the new task, the different culture. No, it wasn’t just a different culture that awaited me. It was an immersion in a different universe.
For 3 out of 6 weeks in Calcutta, I felt mentally, emotionally and physically in a state of emergency. Add to that the intense heat and 70-80% humidity. It was the hottest summer in India for 50 years.
I ignored all that during the day, as I was sufficiently occupied with the patients, their complaints and the limited resources available.
I had more trouble with sleepless nights. Finding a tiny dry area on the sweaty mattress was the next challenge.
My four workstations were differently “comfortable”. If I had to award stars:
Foreshore Road, the temple of luxury **(*),
Shengail**
Bhojerhat **
Tikia Para minus 3*
This workplace is actually an imposition. Street noise with constant honking on one side, the railroad on the other.
The compressor, which is supposed to supply electricity for the lights and ventilators (but sometimes doesn’t), is deafening. And patients loudly fighting for a place in front of the examination room.
Listening to the heart or lungs? A fantastically imaginative undertaking.
Measure blood pressure? Hear sounds? Often impossible. Readings are taken by feel and by the deflection of the pointer.
My two translators Esther and Nasima turn out to be real treasures, they carry me through the first days and weeks – they are my lifeline!
“Doctor: …chicken pox”. me: no idea that chicken pox is chicken pox.
You are responsible for my “not going under”. THANK YOU for that!
After 3 weeks I emerge. Everything becomes “round”. I feel comfortable and at home. I think about how I could manage to do 2 assignments in a row.
At the weekends, we go on excursions to the surrounding area. To the Sunderbans, Varanasi and Shantiniketan.
And the 6 weeks are already up.
I could stay an extra working day, but before I knew it, the driver was waiting to take me to Kolkata airport.
This is where the impressions of the last 6 weeks begin to run high.
Thoughts and memories – still fresh – are still driving and I’m homesick for Howrah, even though I haven’t left yet.
The urgent desire to apply and implement in the next Kolkata assignment everything that I laboriously worked on in the first one makes me book the next assignment as soon as I get home. One more “repeat offender” in the Austrian / German Doctors team.”
