Health Insurance

I feel like I haven't done anything worth blogging about because I haven't travelled in 10 days! But that's about to change...

I've had funny little moments - like the sign reading "kabab and lollipop festival". I didn't actually go but the marketing genius behind that one still makes me laugh. I also had a roommate for a month - Kelly - who is doing in MBA in Toronto and was interning for CARE Canada here. That's a picture of us in front of my doorway.

But the big thing occupying my thoughts is that my driver's wife just had surgery. She had a fibroid growing in her uterus causing immense pain so they had to remove the uterus. I've offered my employees and their families "health insurance", essentially I pay their medical costs. Medical costs here are really cheap and comparing to the US, this surgery was cheap but it was still $900 (bargained down from $1200). That's six months salary for my driver so obviously he can't afford it. So I agreed to pay for it. She went into the hospital on Monday and had surgery Tuesday. On Wednesday I was out buying shoes ('cuz I'm that shallow) and picked up some flowers for Satender's wife. I wasn't sure how he would get them to her (he takes the bus from my house) and as we were talking he suggested that we go give them to her now. So I went to the hospital (where of course they don't allow flowers!) and went up to meet his family for the first time. And his whole family was there (he said it was half), his three kids, mother, mother-in-law, brother, niece. The hospital was depressing (it's a cold, barren place) but clean. She was in a room with 4 other people. I assume the "VIP Rooms" were for just one person.

When we went into her room and she was sleeping. She woke up but was clearly heavily drugged and managed to see that I was there, figure out who I was and she groggily and painfully whispered 'thank you'. Pretty gut wrenching. Then the mothers started saying 'Ap acha, ap bahut acha' meaning 'you are good, very good'. It was too much so I left.

Satender is very happy that his wife is in the 'good' hospital - where they give her hot packs for her stomach and use 'american' dressings for the stitches. It's not the best hospital in Delhi but it's better than the government ones.