How to commit a miracle
All of the details are over on Joy’s blog. For those of you with short attention spans, here’s the instant replay.
- First, have your partner, who’s a doctor, take on a new pro bono patient who’s absolutely crippled and bedridden with rhematoid arthritis.
- Have her realize that her new patient hasn’t seen the sun in four years because the arthitis has moved into the spine as well as deformed both legs.
- Then watch call local doctors to price wheelchairs. Learn that in Himachal a wheelchair costs as low as INR3000 used (or about $75), while a new one runs about INR 8000 (or about $US200)
- Decide that the wheelchair’s certainly affordable, but maybe a few folks could help defray the costs a bit. Anything left over can go for stuff like antibiotics, pain meds and vitamins (the most common stuff Tibetan refugees often need but can’t afford.)
- Take your little problem to the fiber arts community.
- Watch in stupefaction, as an incredible number of not-wealthy people send in $5 here and $10 there for a total of over $700.
- Meantime, take many phonecalls from your partner the doctor as she shops for wheelchairs and argues taxi wallahs into transportation logistics.
- Watch your partner the doctor come home in triumph from dropping off the wheelchair and filling a camera full of pictures of a smiling patient who will be able to attend the big Losar celebration this year.
