Consulting for Kollemcode
Kollemcode lies in the south-western corner of Vilavancode taluk, close enough to the Kerala border that daily life runs across it — trade, family, schooling and, frequently, healthcare. It is coastal country with agricultural villages behind it, and its patients have long had a particular kind of medical experience: care assembled from both states, a clinic here, a hospital there, prescriptions from three doctors, and no single record that follows the patient. For an acute illness that works well enough. For diabetes — a condition managed across decades, where the trend matters more than any single reading — it works poorly. Dr. Ruskin’s practice offers the opposite arrangement: one senior specialist, one record, and a full hospital a short distance inland.
Diabetes care Dr. Ruskin provides here
Camp-day consultations cover the complete outpatient practice: review of sugar reports and all current medicines, blood pressure and weight, foot examination every visit, insulin initiation with proper teaching, and diet guidance built around the local plate — rice, fish, tapioca, coconut. Where a laboratory or hospital is needed, everything routes to PPK Hospital with the record intact: same-day HbA1c, kidney function and urine testing, imaging, diabetic wound care with surgical support on campus, and admission with 24×7 ICU when a complication turns serious. For patients who have been managing with prescriptions collected from several sources, the first proper review usually involves untangling duplicates.
Living with diabetes on the border
Two practical problems recur here. The first is fragmented records — medicines prescribed in one state, tests done in another, and nobody holding the sequence. The remedy is unglamorous: keep every report and prescription, carry them or photograph them, and let one doctor be responsible for the plan. The second is coastal foot risk — wet work, sandy ground, barefoot habits and unnoticed injuries, in a population where diabetic nerve damage is common. Every consultation here includes a foot check for exactly that reason, and any wound is treated as urgent rather than watched.
Getting to PPK Hospital, Marthandam
Kollemcode connects inland to Marthandam on routes that feed the Trivandrum–Nagercoil highway. Buses run through the day, and the hospital stands on the main road opposite the CSI Church, a short walk from the Marthandam stop. Patients coming from the coastal side usually change once at Marthandam rather than travelling straight through, so it is worth allowing for the wait when booking a morning slot. Patients from Neerodi, Painkulam and the surrounding villages follow the same routes. Malayalam and Tamil are both spoken at the hospital, which matters for border families whose elders are more comfortable in one or the other. Booking on WhatsApp before travelling confirms the time and the reports to bring. Address: PPK Hospital, NH 47, Marthandam, Tamil Nadu 629165.
Who should come in
Come sooner rather than waiting for a review if you have a foot wound, cut or blister that is not healing within a few days; new burning or numbness in the feet; repeated low-sugar episodes; sugar readings that have stayed high for weeks; unusual thirst, tiredness and weight loss together; or a recent hospital admission with no clear follow-up plan. Border patients in particular should come in when nobody is certain which medicines they are currently taking — untangling that is often the single most valuable thing a consultation achieves.
Emergencies
Call 108 — the service operates in both Tamil Nadu and Kerala, so a border location is no obstacle. Call for sudden weakness or face drooping, slurred speech, chest pain, breathlessness, unconsciousness, or very high sugar with vomiting and drowsiness. Give a clear landmark, note the time symptoms began, and give nothing by mouth to a drowsy patient. Go to the nearest emergency department in either state; PPK Hospital’s 24×7 emergency and ICU services are at Marthandam.
Frequently asked questions — Kollemcode
Dr. Dante Ruskin serves Kollemcode through monthly camp days and daily consultations at PPK Hospital, Marthandam, a short journey inland. He is a senior diabetologist and also a critical-care (ICU) specialist, with roughly 24 years of experience.
It becomes one when nobody holds the whole picture. Prescriptions overlap or contradict, tests get repeated, and no single doctor tracks your trend over years. Keeping one specialist and one record — with copies you carry — solves most of it without giving up local convenience.
Every prescription and medicine strip you currently use, all recent blood reports, and any discharge summaries. If records are scattered across two states, photograph everything and send it on WhatsApp before the visit so the history can be reconstructed properly.
A short journey inland to Marthandam on the Trivandrum–Nagercoil highway. Buses run the route through the day, and the hospital is on the main road opposite the CSI Church.
Call 108 — it operates in both Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and the nearest available ambulance responds. Go to the nearest hospital with an emergency department regardless of which state it is in; in a crisis, distance matters more than familiarity.