A Better Man

  Boy with disabling burns 
  Originally uploaded by interplast

Dehradun, India -- Michelle Spring, Webster Fellow   Well, we're one week into the Dehradun trip. This is an amazing trip.  India is such an overwhelming, chaotic place that seems to be so full of heart.  We have seen many, many severe burns. 

Drs. Yogi and Kush Aeron are amazing hosts.  Anything we ask for, they will find for us.   Yogi is involved with the care of every patient we see, and he and Kush already know most of them.  It is overwhelming to watch them work.  They are actually housing the post-op patients in their own living room right now.  The facilities are the most meager that I have worked in so far, yet the hosts and the care that is given to the patients by them are unparalleled. 

I hope Yogi doesn't mind, but I want to share something he said to us on the first day at clinic.  He told us that before he met the volunteers of Interplast, he did not know about all the profoundly poor, needy people in his own country who had such terrible burns.  He told us that Interplast has made him, first, a better man, and second, a better surgeon.  I was so touched by his emotions and that he shared them with us.  I think he is a wonderful man who is giving so much to humanity.