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Volunteering at Mother Teresa’s hospital

The Hospital for the Dying, in the Kalighat area of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India, is where I spent three memorable mornings as a volunteer. The hospital, established by Mother Teresa in 1950, is run by the Missionaries of Charity with the help of volunteers. Working there made me realize 1) how fortunate we Americans are and 2) how overregulated we are here in the U.S. or, perhaps, how underregulated they are in India.

IAMAT medical care abroad

One of the perils of international travel is dealing with illness or other health emergencies when in a foreign country. (Cruise ships with medical services aboard are the exception to this.) When we learned in 1988 that the International Association for Medical Assistance to Travellers, or IAMAT (1623 Military Rd. #279, Niagara Falls, NY 14304-1745; www.iamat. org), helps you do just this in numerous countries (in 2007 it’s 125), we joined.

Legroom medical concerns

In the letter titled “Economy Class Syndrome” (July ’07, pg. 16), the reader’s recounting of her husband’s pulmonary embolism demonstrates the dangers of the airline’s present policy of cramming more and more people into less and less space on their flights. One of my coworkers died of a pulmonary embolism last November immediately following a flight to the Philippines.

Doctor visit in London

While staying with friends just outside London in May ’06, I woke up one morning with a sore throat and a husky voice. I told my friends I had better catch the next flight back to California in case I was coming down with something.

They suggested I see a doctor first, but, it being Sunday, I imagined that, like in the U.S., that meant a trip to the E.R. in a hospital, a wait of two or three hours and a bill for three or four hundred dollars. My friend insisted it was no problem; the National Health Service had a Sunday clinic nearby.

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