Longings of a heart

‘There is time for everything. Time to be born and a time to die.’- Ecclesiastes3:2    “When we have overcome absence with phone calls, winglessness with airplanes, summer heat with air conditioning- when we have overcome all these and much more besides, then there will be two things with which we must cope: the evil in our hearts and death.”- Lament for a son, Nicholas Wolterstroff. It was an unusual day in many ways. We had wrapped up neurosurgery OR by 4:30 pm and I had just visited my sister in law who was recuperating from a surgery. As it has become my habit now I religiously looked at the following day’s list. There was a 54 year old lady for the excision of a kidney mass in the schedule and since she was admitted in the next ward of my family member, I decided to have a look at her. A short plump woman lied on the distant corner of the ward with head propped up and body curled under thick blankets. The two sons were sitting next to her bed chatting indis...

  ‘Please don’t go father! ……That’s the way of all flesh’. - Cinderella [2015] The view from O6 ward of Christian medical college is majestic. Set on high altitude, the block overlooks the city of Vellore and its historic fort. When you peer through the latticed windows, you can see vehicles and people just racing along on the roads like busy ants indulging in their daily pursuits. From such a distance, life also looks small and ephemeral. Into this cardio thoracic ward, my patient got admitted for undergoing a bypass procedure of the heart. Since I was the part of anesthesia team, I had dropped in to say hello. My patient [lets’ call him Rakesh] was a 70 year old gentlemen. With balding grey hair and teeth that may fall off any moment, he was a verbose personality. He starts his conversation and does not give a chance for the listener to even intervene and break the flow of words. Doctors already suffer from a malady of not letting the patients talk enough. As I as...

‘What is mankind that you are mindful of them, Human beings that you care for them You have made them a little lower than the angels And crowned them with glory and honor. ’ -Psalms 8:4,5 Of all the postings for an anesthesia registrar, the one that inspires awe like no other is the stint in cardio thoracic theatre. Though it is intense, the intellectual and emotional rewards are amazing. The CT theatre is situated in the centre of the entire OR complex of Christian medical college. It is the largest and most sterile of all the operating rooms. And it must be that way, after all people’s hearts are cut open and closed to beat and pump better everyday. A typical day starts at 6:40 A.M when we change to scrubs and hurry much before the other colleagues to get a battery of drugs and infusions ready. Machine is checked, patients pre anesthetic consult document scrupulously studied, invasive catheters flushed and writing boards filled before the patient is rolled into the ...

“I cried that I had no shoes, until I saw a man with no feet”- Anon. ‘What we do in life, echoes in eternity.’- Gladiator (2000).  Beds in surgical ICU churn out strong lessons to a registrar. The lessons are not always academic but  also transformational. I just finished my rotation of critical care mandatory to my course and a family still lingers in my mind as I walk over the glint of a floor that bears stories of tragedy and hope in equal measure. A month ago, on one of the dangerous roads of our country, a family was riding in a car. The father, a sexagenarian along with his wife and daughter were riding along blissfully oblivious of the tragedy they were about to encounter.  The vehicle skid over the rough contour of mortar toppling the 1000 cc car thrice before reaching a halt. The three casualties were brought to emergency. The father was bleeding into the abdomen. A CT scan showed a big clot around the kidney and his blood pressure as a resul...

 ‘And always night and day, he was in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones’. Mark 5:5 I was done for the day. I picked my bags and was trudging along the changing room when I received a call from emergency regarding a sick patient. I left my paraphernalia and ran to casualty. The resuscitation room was a buzz of activity and emotion. I was envious of these physicians who dealt with high voltage scenarios round the clock. I had to jostle for space among the crowd to reach the man I was called to see. He was 30 year old Ravi lying in a ill fitting trolley with blue bed sheet over him. The head end of the bed was elevated to give his lungs some breathing space. The IV drip was flowing like a rivulet into his neck. The monitor attached was screaming for attention hoisting the deranged parameters in yellow and red. Ravi was breathing at frantic pace. He was also rolling in pain. I introduced myself and he was coherent enough to decipher my poor Tamil and reply...

“Woman, you are set free from your infirmity .” Luke 13:12 Rotation to surgical ICU came as a whiff of fresh air to my course. From the daily rigmarole of breathing in medical gases and day long surgery lists, ICU opens the eyes of the anaesthesiologist to see how crucial his role is to the outcome of a patient and his family. ICU keeps us in touch with people who have relatives waiting to hear news that engenders life and death. It is those interactions with people that I often miss in theatre. Premedicated with anxiolytics a person coming for surgery does not even remember an anaesthetist post procedure. In popular medical worldview, the anaesthetist plays a second fiddle to the surgeon and the only reason his more enviable colleagues get along well is for an extra case to be done beyond the stipulated time. But I am inclined to think that it is a mistake. The night before I went to ICU, I accompanied Anand for preoperative examination of patients. I met a lady named P...

The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. ”-  C.S. Lewis. Ever since our daughter was born, Alice does not have a single day of uninterrupted sleep which practically means being on call every night for one year six months. In that continuous caring of our child, Alice forgets an equally important need. And that is taking care of her own self.  As a husband who delivers sleeping gases to patients and who gets partially anaesthetized in the process, I have little help to offer her in the domestic predicament of ours. So, I decide to take my wife on a road trip. The resort is situated in an idyllic setting. The private beach is free from loitering and huge crowds. Next to the beach are green lawns with coco trees and a beach facing restaurant that serves meals. A gaggle of tamed geese run helter-skelter as we walk through the paths to our cottage. our room is few meters from the beach ...