It’s been a busy two and a half weeks at Aravind. So much so, that we hardly updated the blog at all! But fear not, here come all the updates!

Glaucoma Gang has been researching away in LAICO, while also interviewing some of the most knowledgeable glaucoma experts in the world including Dr. Krishnadas, the Chief Medical Officer and Dr. George, the Chief of Glaucoma Department at Aravind. Disha specifically looked into ways to make the surgical intervention of glaucoma less invasive, deskilled, and inexpensive by conducting a deep dive into the physiological underpinnings of glaucoma. Shayan conducted many patient interviews (with the help of Niranjanaa) in order to determine the root causes of non-compliance to topical medications in Aravind patients.

Cataract Cornea Crew has spent a lot of time talking to trainees in the wetlab, and interviewing experts for corneal transplants, like Dr. Ashish, Dr. Aswin and Dr. Das from Aravind. The wetlab was exciting in particular, since we got to look through an ophthalmoscope, play with human cataracts, and on the last day got to practice SICS on a human donor eye! Turns out SICS is not as easy as it seems, we basically had to butcher the eye open to take the IOL out of the donor eye. Surgeons are awesome!! We also tried to do intrastromal injections, where you have to target the drug midway through the cornea. Again, good thing we decided to become engineers instead of doctors. But we’ll see after Noah and Natsuha take Surgery for Engineers in the fall!

Being at Aravind has been truly inspEYEring. The past two and a half weeks have been incredibly dense but equally as meaningful. Our next steps at Hopkins include narrowing down to the most impactful and feasible needs to work on for the rest of the year!

It’s been real Madurai,

Cinnabids

Hello fans,

Hope you are all doing well and not missing us too much. We have had a DOPE week, from observing surgeries and talking to world class doctors to playing a wild game of cards and taking bird based personality tests (link here, you’re welcome).

Fun facts:
– Aravind’s fastest surgeons can complete a cataract surgery in under three minutes
– In 2013, a sixth layer of the cornea, the Dua’s layer, was discovered
– Aravind does 1500 surgeries a day
– There are 65 Aravind vision centers spread through rural India covering 4.3 MILLION people and providing them with access to care

Other fun highlights of the week:
– Noah learning how to say the world “vague”
– Team dinner at Domino’s pizza
– Disha losing her first game of Egyptian Rat Screw ever to the new champion, Niranjanaa
– Literally half the team died and came back to life thanks to grocery gang’s much needed medicine run
– Noah, Shayan and Disha getting chased by cows
– Meeting an inspiring fellow from Ghana who is one of four retinal specialists in his country!

No context quotes:
– “Bro, you suckle?”
– “Noah, are we your buddies?”
– “Kontola”
– “Gwacking is an Olympic sport”
– “No no good”
– “Born to be clever, too clever to be clever”

And now, the real reason you read this whole post, our personality test results:

	Dove	Owl	Peacock	Eagle
Brooke	70%	25%	0%	5%
Disha	42%	16%	28%	14%
Natsuha	37.5%	25%	25%	12.5%
Niranjanaa	27.5%	20%	30%	22.5%
Noah	0%	15%	25%	60%
Shayan	5%	10%	70%	5%
Kunal	25%	25%	25%	25%

And 50% reason to remember the name.

Love,
the doves

It’s been a packed three days since we arrived at Madurai. We’ve already seen so many procedures and met so many kind Aravind doctors.

The afternoon that we arrived, the team settled into Harmony, a temporary hostel, where we were served our first South Indian meal of the trip! We then met up with Kunal and all the clinical sponsors to discuss the next three weeks at Aravind. Even though we were all extremely tired, we somehow made it through!

Saturday was our first day of rotations in the OT, where we earned doctor status. Surprisingly, all six of us fit right in with our hospital attire – even Noah, who after rummaging through the entire shelf, found a pair of flip flops that semi-fit him.

On Sunday, we had the unique opportunity to visit two Aravind camps, where doctors and nurses, or “sisters”, were brought to local villages to screen patients for cataracts, glaucoma, refractive errors, and diabetic retinopathy FOR FREE. Over 400 patients were seen amongst the two camps and those who required surgery were referred to Aravind. Luckily, NJ was able to communicate in Tamil with the patients and convey their stories to the rest of the team – although, we’re all learning Tamil, slowly but surely. another dosa venum, am I right? We did a lot of serious note taking and observations, but also got the chance to explore the area!

Can’t for to start our first full week here. Here are a few gems from the weekend:

Signing off,

Natsuha and Disha

It has been three hours since we arrived at (eye)AD. We got checked in, went through security, ate Pizza Hut pizzas, and somehow managed to get to our gate right on time for boarding… only to find out that our flight has been delayed by one hour. While Brooke and NJ are halfway across the Atlantic Ocean with pretty views, we have the unfortunate view of Shayan and Noah enjoying the extra leg room before our flight.

We’re off to a rough start, but we are looking forward to start our rotations at Aravind! For the past two weeks our team has been rotating at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Hopkins. We split up into three groups:

• Cataract Crew – Natsuha and Noah
• Glaucoma Gang – Disha and Shayan
• Retina Royals – Brooke and NJ

After observing various surgeries and clinics, we are really excited to use our new insights to better understand eye care in India. We hope to arrive in Madurai after 28 hours of travel ready to go with our first day of rotations!

Hopefully our flight won’t get too delayed, but hey, at least Shayan can finally do his travel course.

Deesh and Nat