Twins?

Just returned from Shealdah station for morning wound care and feeding the children. Although I try to be equal to all of the kids there are always a few that steal your heart. The coffee brown, almond shaped eyes of a young girl at the station absolutely takes my breath away. When she sees us coming she yells "auntie" and runs, jumps and attaches herself to us. I have a hard time putting her down when it is time to do work.
A lot of what we see is so graphic that it is hard to describe (don't worry, I have plenty of pictures). Today for example, we walked upon a man who had his arm hidden under a blanket. His friends motioned us and we took a look. His forearm was contorted into a letter Z, obviously badly broken and painful. He had fashioned a splint which was covered in bugs. I took a deep breath, reached for the medical bag and Ann and I went to work. We made a splint with newspaper and tape and wrapped a Kerlex around it. He looked hungry so we gave him a bag of food and moved on. Just to get an idea of the environment where we clean wounds, this is what I saw when I looked around. We were sitting on the floor of the station. To the right was a group of men smoking heroin. Behind us were cows, pigs and dogs running everywhere, including on us. In front, crowds of people pushed and shoved to get onto the train. Needless to say, it is hard to keep any kind of 'clean' environment to promote wound healing.
I moved to the entrance of the station where Ann had set up shop. She motioned for me to come. ***Warning - anyone with a squeamish stomach should stop now*** A man was lying on the ground crying in pain. Ann showed me his scrotum, which was swollen to the size of tennis balls. The skin was broken down into a seeping, black wound approx. 2 inches x 2 inches. He was feverish and looked like he could go into shock. We asked what had happened via a Bengali translator and we could never get a clear answer. The trouble with our organization is that unless it is something that can be fixed with basic medical equipment, we can't do much. One option is the government hospital where people wait for days to be seen or to the Mother Teresa house which is recovering from a law suit and has a stringent screening process. We cleaned his wound, covered it and directed him to Mother Teresa. After finishing with him, a man pulled me aside and showed me his groin covered in STD's. Another guy with confirmed TB 5 years ago showed up last night coughing up blood. We are fighting here at the front lines for some of the world's sickest people and while everyday I feel changed both personally and as a nurse, I still struggle with the eternal question we face of ... what else can we do?
The title of this blog refers to the train ride home. A man was talking with me and asked about my 'friend' (Ann). He asked if she was my twin. I said 'friend?', no 'twin' he said. I said no and he smiled and said, 'you look the exact same.' I told him ' we get that all the time', chuckled and got off the train...Katie