Day 18 - Hum Kolkata aa gaye!

August 19th 2014

August 19th was an early morning for Team Brady and Adam. We all woke up around 2:30am to catch a cab to the airport for our 6:30am flight to Kolkata. Kesavan was leaving later in the afternoon from Hyderabad, so he stayed back at the hotel and slept in.

Throughout our time with Kesavan we have been writing down all the funny quotes he says. Since this is our last post with Kesavan, we figured we should share our list of Kesavan quotes:

"It's okay, the rat was scrubbed in"

"So is boneless chicken like seedless grapes, they are just born without them?"

When someone asked why Kesavan was so serious: "I'm serious cause I'm eating serious food"

"I have 2 's'. It's a Samsung. I'm not up to 5s's yet"

Hum Kolkata aa gaye! (We arrived in Kolkata)

Our flight arrived in Kolkata around 8:30am and after the quickest exit from the airport and luggage retrieval (under 20 minutes) we made our way outside to the cars waiting for us. Two hours and lots of Kolkata traffic later, we arrived at the Tolley Club hotel. We had a meeting scheduled for 12:00 am at
Medica Superspecialty hospital, so after a quick turnaround change and a carb-loaded snack, we were ready for our first day in Kolkata!

Quick snack before heaidng out for the day

At Medica we met up with Dr. Acharya who came with us to meet Dr Banerjee (leading Senior Interventional Cardiologist, and his colleagues; Dr Moitre and Dr Goupta. We had a quick introductory meeting with Dr Banerjee, followed by further educational sessions from Dr Moitre and Dr Goupta. During this conversations we also had some time to speak with patients, patient families, a medical device distributor and medical device rep.

Maddie speaking with a patient and their family

Shruthi speaking to a device rep

After the educational sessions, Dr. Goupta led us to the outpatient clinic to see the diagnostic tests and facilities at Medica. Adam volunteered to try out the Holter monitor and the nurses and assistants helped guide us through their process for diagnosing bradyarrhythmias.

Adam getting the Holter monitor put on while Shruthi was taking notes

Exhausted from the travelling of the day, Adam, Erin, and Maddie took a car back to the Tolley Club to get some sleep. Meanwhile, Shruthi, Dhananjay, and Dr. Acharya headed over to a secondary hospital, Apex hospital, to see their facilities and speak with the cardiologists and GPs there. It was definitely a long first day in Kolkata, but we found out some really great insights and spoke to a number of key stakeholders for our projet.