Longings of a heart

WOUNDS OF HOPE The wind was harsh as a surgeon’s knife cornering mankind to the embrace of warmth and wool.   Laxman was consoling the winter shivers by sleeping beside the fiery campfire in the tiny hamlet of tribal Orissa. Suddenly, he threw a convulsion and fell into the fire.  The rebellious brain, by dead habit, did not attend to the thermal injury his body was suffering, till the somnolent villagers could salvage this mentally retarded child. His right arm got totally burnt and the elbow joint was exposed. Maggots made their cottages in the putrefied flesh. The ignorant parents brought this child of utter neglect to the hospital 20 days after the mishap. The first look at the wound, as the attending doctor triggered many feelings in me. Hope was not one of them. I had to explain the parents that the child would need intense ulcer care- the inclement insects had to be flushed out, the dead tissue had to be excised, the wound needed to be cleaned, before a sk...

A YEAR- A STORY  Should I make this reflection public? I doubt how a personal and intimate musing as this could be of any social benefit! But then I feel that the story needs to be told, because it involves struggles that are too common for ordinary mortals and if we could sit and discuss them, let alone find solutions, then the purpose of this writing is achieved. That’s why I pen these words hoping to find friends who share my temptations and people who can guide me forward. The year that went by had many facets like squares of a dice. Some fell on right numbers. Some tumbled away into waywardness. This is my take on the year that glided past in my life. The year started on a good note. I went to the lakeside and took some resolutions. Those were the initial days of my work in the hospital and I could learn many new things. I was given the responsibility of the ward and the lives of the patients in it. I did the first C-section, performed the maiden lumbar puncture, gave ...

DILEMMAS AND DIRECTIONS October brought with it, the quick transition in weather as the chill blanket of fog, pushed the monsoon winds to oblivion. Likewise, the in-patient department of Ashakiran hospital was putting up its contrasting facets like an artist flouting various costumes. At a moment it was a sanitised version of hell; in the next it became the sentinel of hope. At an instance it offered solace; it broke the hearts of men in the next. In those moments of rapid incarnations, the ward offered valuable lessons as I sit down and ponder over a Sunday that took me through a full circle of dejection and contentment. The phone rang persistently voicing the urgency of the call that Saturday night. The nurse on the other side spoke in her typical dialect, “Saar , naya patient asla!!” (Sir, a new patient has come). Clearing my eyes of the scales of somnolence, I looked at the watch. It was 2:00 am. Facing a cold that was sending a shiver down my spine, I set out of my room...

FAITH, DOUBT AND MEDICINE “…Let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave in the sea driven and tossed by the wind.” - The Bible. Life is a drama with scenes engendering varying emotions. Hospital is a place where we can best see this phenomenon. Life and death; hope and discouragement; victory and defeat; faith and doubt appear as two facets of a coin as we walk through the wards. More than the white coats, the stink of phenol, the needles and injections, these feelings emanating from human hearts have touched me in my sojourn as a junior doctor. And the question, why people do not comply with our instructions, in the recent staff meeting triggered this prose. In a place like tribal Orissa, where awareness levels are abysmally low, a perfunctory look at the hospital reveals a lack of trust- the pervading feeling that the hospital authorities are bent on causing harm to the patient. Noncompliance to treatment, thinking that doctors want to squeeze ...

DOCTORS AND EMBARRASMENTS “ Whenever a ship goes into the sea, it has 3 questions to answer. One, why is it there in the first place? Two, how is it going to prevent itself from colliding with other ships?  And three, how is it going to prevent itself from sinking?” - C.S.Lewis. That was a rainy afternoon in the noisy suburbs of Hyderabad. I was on my way to Mumbai for a writers’ workshop. In the jostle to get down an overcrowded bus, I fell down flat on the busy road that pumps through peak hour traffic. My father had been informed and the first question he posed on the whole ordeal was- “How can you fall from a bus being a doctor?” The question, I felt, ranged from being frivolous to frustrating. A stream of thought ensued that reminded me that doctors are not supermen. They are ordinary people with fussing, fretting, failings and frailties. They are not above instincts and impulses. They are not above the laws of gravity- as noted from my pathetic fall. Not a week pas...

                                    PERSEVERENCE It was two months since I had joined Asha Kiran hospital- a small resort like place in picturesque Orissa.  After intense training, my seniors left me in the ward to take first calls. 50 year old Sukhdev had come with acute renal failure, shopping in various hospitals on the way without any respite. I had seen his serum creatinine report which was 22 mg/dl which meant that his kidneys were long lost in dysfunctional slumber. The very look at the report triggered a sense of hopelessness and the first thing that came into my mind was referral. The skinny man who was disoriented on presentation had a wife and two sons who were visibly exhausted in their shuttle to find a panacea. The elder son replied that they had gone to enough places already and they could not go anywhere else. I gave a fluid challenge, wishing that the sleeping kidneys wo...

  DIRGE AND SONNET That was a typical July afternoon. The monsoons had begun to eclipse the sun, wetting the serene landscapes around Asha Kiran hospital. I had just finished my rounds and was awaiting lunch break to tame my burning stomach. A jeep raced through the iron gates of the hospital to the emergency block, bringing along 16 year old Amitha Khora. The avalanche of attendants had to be cleared like snow on the Himalayan Highway, before I was informed that the patient was a known sickle cell disease. Few pints of fluid, antibiotics and oxygen- the therapeutic recipe for the crisis of this ailment, was a regular ritual at this place. I did not see that it would be a problem to see Amitha up and about. But I was wrong. Amitha was studying tenth standard, a remarkable achievement in the otherwise illiterate family. Suddenly she developed severe chest pain- a quintessential symptom of the aggravation of disease. The old medical records revealed that she was admitted severa...