My typical day starts with spending an hour in an Uber to get to the clinic (Chennai traffic is notoriously awful). On days that we are working at the clinic, the morning is usually filled with a few patient appointments, during which patient intake and initial evaluation forms are filled out before they go to see the doctor. During the afternoons, it's a combination of collecting/organizing the large set of patient data we have from both the clinic and the nonprofit camps, as well as shadowing and learning about different parts of the clinic, including our upcoming accreditation renewal application, observing operations and surgeries as they happen, and patient billing/insurance. 

This week, we had another nonprofit camp at an old-age home in Eraiyur, a rural village about an hour and a half out of Chennai. Here, we gave free-of-cost mammograms and pap smears to about 65 women who were both residents and staff at the old-age home, and also local women of the community. My work mainly consisted of registering the patients and collecting their medical history, but through that, I got to have and see some valuable conversations around health awareness and education in rural India, which unfortunately is severely lacking. This gap in healthcare provision, coupled with our head doctor's genuine passion and care about cancer therapy accessibility, is really inspiring for me as I'm learning about the important community role that a physician plays. 

Here are some pictures from this week's camp: