LIFE...CAMERA...ACTION!

Internship- Nobody said it was easy...no one ever said it would be so hard...

Last year was one hell of a ride- from learning to draw blood to learning how not to draw conclusions about people...from running for reports to running for signatures...from breaking our backs in the EMS to fixing broken bones with casts and slabs...been there, done that! Thinking about it now, there were many small incidents that made us think, laugh and changed the way we looked at life.

Holi-day...A Doctor is Never off Duty

My first Emergency duty in internship was on the fourth day of my first posting- General Surgery. And it was Holi!!! 32 hours of non- stop work which included doing the dressing of two full-body burns patients and a case of head injury who after the dressing, gets up and then loses consciousness to fall on you...I needed a reason to smile. And there were plenty! It was past midnight when a man was brought in by a group of five to six guys with a CLW over his head. Of course, all of them were high on life and spirit! While two of us were attending to him and suturing his wound the man decided to introduce himself, “Hum to iss nagar ke Shehenshah hain” and his cronies all repeated together “Aap to iss nagar ke Shehenshah hain”!!! They repeated this all the while that we sutured not only boosting the confidence of His Highness but also adding to our amusement!

And then there was another fellow, in his twenties, who had come with an uprooted nail and a partially amputated finger. Once the dressing was done he asked me very seriously, “Ma’am main beer toh pee sakta hoon na?” Why not, we’ll be right here, waiting for you!

Ek Aam Kahani

There was a patient admitted in the Paediatrics ward during our posting there. He was six years old, a case of Nephrotic Syndrome, relapsing for the third time and a smile so bright that it did justice to his name, Roshan. He was from Bihar and had come here for treatment. His father worked in Mumbai and Mother had come here with his younger brother. They had decided to take room in Mumbai. “Jab tak yeh thik nahi ho jaata, hum yahin rahenge.” They were willing to do anything to see their child healthy again. He would smile, laugh, play with us but hardly ever spoke. When his mother would go out to get something he used to stand right in the middle of the ward looking at the door waiting for her to come back. When I used to wait in the ward he would come slyly from behind and pat my back, give me high fives and happily pose for photos with me. One emergency night I came to the ward at 1.30 am and found him sitting on his bed, eating a mango with the pulp all over his face and hands. “Tu raat ke dedh baje aam kha raha hai?” I asked him. He nodded in glee. “Usse aam bahut pasand hai, humare ghar mein pedh hai aam ka. Aaj uske papa uske liye Mumbai ke aam lekar aaye hain”, the mother said.

A few days after my posting got over, I was passing the Paediatrics ward. I thought I would say hi to my friend once. I saw him standing in the middle of the ward again, looking at the door. Must be waiting for his mother to come back, I thought. As I waved at him, he ran towards me shouting, “Aa gayi, aa gayi!” He then grabbed my hand and pulled me towards his bed. “Aaj main ghar jaa raha hoon”, he said, the most he had ever spoken to me. The mother smiled and said, “Aaj discharge de denge. Woh aapka hi intezaar kar raha tha!” 

Lost and Found

During my posting in Peripheral Civic Hospitals, I was working for a month in Bhabha Hospital at Bandra. It was a Monday morning and I was feeling no better than Garfield. I was late to work; somebody had put a cross on my muster on a day when I was actually present and let’s just say that it was one of those days when you feel everything is going wrong! I was heading towards the ward when a little girl, six to seven years old, came to me and asked, “Didi, bacchon ke aankhon ke doctor kahan baithte hain?” I told her the OPD number. “Tumhare saath kaun hai?” I asked her.

“Papa”.

“Papa kahan hai?”

“Woh meri behen ko dikhaane aankhon ke doctor ke paas lekar gaye hain.”

“Toh tum akeli ho? Aur koi nahi hai?”

“Papa ne mujhe bike ke saath rukne bola tha...par mujhe bike nahi mil rahi. Toh main yahan aa gayi.”

“Thik hai, main tumhe le jaati hun papa ke paas.”

“Nahi nahi, aap bas mujhe bata do doctor kahan hain, main bahar hi wait karoongi.”

“Par main tumhe akela toh nahi chhod sakti. Chal mere saath chal.”

I took her to the OPD building. She looked around, spotted her father waiting with her sister, and waved “Papa”. He came and asked what had happened. She said she couldn’t find the bike. Her father explained to her where he had parked it but then decided to go and check himself. “Aap bacchi ko aise akela chhodkar mat jayiye”, I told him. “Nahi, nahi, galti ho gayi,” he said.

I turned to leave when suddenly the girl called out “Didi! Very very thank you!!!” and smiled, two of her upper incisors had fallen off. But the gap in her teeth seemed to fill my day with joy!

If Tomorrow Never Comes

I was sitting in the Casualty at V.N.Desai Hospital, Santacruz. At 2.30am, a case of Road Traffic Accident came in. One person was brought dead. His friend was hurt on the shoulder but not seriously injured. His wife was also not hurt much and had gone home. The auto driver had injury over his leg. As the Medico Legal Case was being made, I learnt that the deceased was travelling in an auto with his friend and his friend’s wife. They were returning home from a get together. A speeding car had rammed against them and the auto had toppled over. The car sped away, leaving this man bleeding to death and the others injured.

By this time some of their other friends had also come and they had informed his family. At around 3am, his son came. He was just a boy, probably eighteen or nineteen years old. He saw the body. Then he just sat quietly on a chair in the corner. His mother called, all he managed to say was a hello...one of his father’s friends took the phone then from his trembling hand. Around him people were talking about post mortem, the police was talking to the auto driver. And the boy just sat, without a sound, without any expression on his face or a tear on his cheek.

What must he be going through? Could he have imagined in his wildest dream that he would be woken up in the dead of night to come to the hospital for his father’s body? That a man who had left home happily to meet his friends, and must have called or messaged once the party was over, would be no more in a few hours? That three others in the same auto survived with minor injuries and only his father lost his life? That suddenly from worrying about ensuring minimum attendance in college, he would have to worry about the others in his family? The uncertainty of life hit me hard.

His father’s friend who was there with him during the accident came and sat next to him and put his arm around his shoulder...and suddenly the dam seemed to collapse, the tears just flowed...and the boy wept.

This One’s for the Cynics

My last posting was in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. In one of the antenatal OPDs, we interns were taking the basic history. I was calculating the weeks of gestation of a patient when I heard my friend ask a patient, “Pehle kitne, chaar bacche hain?”

“Jee sir”, she replied.

Exasperated, he asked, “Aur kitne chahiye?”

“Bas yeh aakhiri sir.”

Normally I stick to my job and don’t end up talking or commenting on things that are none of my business, but this time I found myself blurting out, “Pehle chaaron ladkiyan hain kya?”

“Jee Madam.”

“Isiliye!” I said.

Few days later, on a post emergency day which happened to be the last day of Navratri, three of us had finished the work and were standing in the corridor when the husband of a patient came towards us. The patient had come in the emergency the previous day and we knew her history. She had been taken up for Caesarean Section. It was her first pregnancy.

“Sabh thik ho gaya na? Kya hua?” My friend asked him.

“Haan sabh thik ho gaya. Jo chahiye tha wahi hua. Sherawali mata aa gayi hai, Sherawali mata”, he said, unable to contain his excitement.

When we looked a little lost, he said, “Beti hui hai...Jo maanga tha, wahi mila!”

We congratulated the proud father. After some time we were asked to collect the patient’s blood for some test. The patient was there in the ward with her beautiful pink bundle of joy. The grandmother was wrapping her up nicely when the father came in.

“Kyun, aur ruk nahi paa rahe ho? Lo, pakdo usse,” said the grandmother as she handed over the baby to him. “Gaal dekhen hain uske? Golu hai...jab se hui hai, sab doctors uske saath khel rahe hain...Golu Golu keh rahe hain. Hum bhi use Golu bulayenge,” she said.

The father kept looking at his precious, his eyes filled with love. He then kissed her tenderly on the forehead and said, “Iska naam Gauri hai...Main iska naam Gauri rakhunga!”

MS