by Emma Sleeth
- India / USA -

Summer has begun here in southern India, which means that most days are in the high 90s or low 100s. It’s bad enough for my friend Val and the staff here at the Dean Foundation—all healthy and living in homes that have fans—but I can’t begin to imagine what it is like for our terminally ill patients. Our bedridden neighbors lie in their homes, day after day, developing puss-filled sores where their hot, damp skin makes contact with the dirt floors and ragged beds they are lying on. We visit them in their homes and dress their bedsores, cutting away tracts of dead skin and sluff the size—and depth—of a pack or two of playing cards and covering the wounds with anti-bacterial solutions, but many sores never improve because of the heat and slow pace at which old bodies heal.