When you write a paper and publish it but find the same thing and the same treatment has been published years before with the same taglines almost.
My professor is a very sad man. None of our papers are getting published either because the stuff we are reporting is outdated or because of insufficient reports or workup, or because we are speaking the truth and not putting in too much fabrication. Plus with his penchant for speed I have a feeling, we are lacking out on content ( thats a personal opinion). Hence, our papers are going everywhere and coming back.
I have taken one case report but I am sitting on it for the time being. And collecting all things I can get on it for free. Once I am done with it, I will perhaps realize that there is not much new to report in this case. The condition is at least diagnosed, and very few have been reported so far. Hence, I will perhaps try not to do what Indians do best, collate stuff and then twist the truth to arrive at a conclusion.
Summarily expresses what some of my old colleagues used to say when I was at AIIMS. So much fund being given for research, AIIMS has virtually produced no meaningful research in the last 50 years since its inception.
When AIIMS could not do that, what can we say about PGIMS?
Lol.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
I wonder if it is the same for everyone. I am so drained when I come from the Emergency. Life is like an empty blur and I feel sapped of life and energy. Sometimes the days are good, sometimes the days are not so good. Today there were 4 casualty deaths. For some inexplicable reason there is a sinking feeling coming from somewhere deep within me. I have narrowed down the choices to one or two. But I have no clue. This used to happen some time back. But for quite some time now it had gone. A claustrophobia of sorts. That was most evident when I intubated the patient wrongly. Dr B came and put it right. No one had attended the patient since the day. And since she was an old case Koch's with Cor Pulmonale, nothing much could be done apparently. I tried intubating her twice. But each time it went into the oesophagus. By the time Dr B came, she was long since gone.
There was another death with a CVA, one with poisoning, one with something else I don't remember. Walking back was a drag. As if something is going to happen. But I just can't put my hands on it what it is. Maybe its the pre 28 year old phenomenon I am feeling. Its in my bones. Starts from today.
Convincing yourself about the choices you make is not a difficult thing to do. But sticking on to the promise is the most trying part. I am just letting myself sip it in. Gradually I will think about this and choose what I must.
Reading up on ECGs and stuff from today. I leave for home on 11th June. Before that I plan to finish Hashimoto's Encephalopathy and CVT. A lot of time has gone by. Getting back on track will take time. Lets hope for the best.
There was another death with a CVA, one with poisoning, one with something else I don't remember. Walking back was a drag. As if something is going to happen. But I just can't put my hands on it what it is. Maybe its the pre 28 year old phenomenon I am feeling. Its in my bones. Starts from today.
Convincing yourself about the choices you make is not a difficult thing to do. But sticking on to the promise is the most trying part. I am just letting myself sip it in. Gradually I will think about this and choose what I must.
Reading up on ECGs and stuff from today. I leave for home on 11th June. Before that I plan to finish Hashimoto's Encephalopathy and CVT. A lot of time has gone by. Getting back on track will take time. Lets hope for the best.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Random Jottings....
I start from you
from the morning of the last
until the dusk of the first.
From the haze of the barren clouds
that sift over salty shores.
To move over the wet rocks,
upon a light house,
with a broken beacon,
a limp falcon
flying above a prey,
clawing with
ineffective snatches, the time
that went by, when
the weather was good.
and things then stood
and she stood by
till a point in magenta
by a dusty sink
disappeared into the
democracies of jobs,
sobs, subjects, choices.
And stood there by
a mahogany table,
half cracked open, by its owner
while she walked
with sores on her feet,
her blood's fate sealed at a number
and the shadows watched
as the times happily
disappeared by.
'Happy Birthday' spoken
into the phone awaiting a response
from behind a wooden door
long since shut.
twenty and eight
Stay happy and tight.
with choices that were never difficult
to make
over causes that one
could not take.
And questions that were
best left unanswered.
from the morning of the last
until the dusk of the first.
From the haze of the barren clouds
that sift over salty shores.
To move over the wet rocks,
upon a light house,
with a broken beacon,
a limp falcon
flying above a prey,
clawing with
ineffective snatches, the time
that went by, when
the weather was good.
and things then stood
and she stood by
till a point in magenta
by a dusty sink
disappeared into the
democracies of jobs,
sobs, subjects, choices.
And stood there by
a mahogany table,
half cracked open, by its owner
while she walked
with sores on her feet,
her blood's fate sealed at a number
and the shadows watched
as the times happily
disappeared by.
'Happy Birthday' spoken
into the phone awaiting a response
from behind a wooden door
long since shut.
twenty and eight
Stay happy and tight.
with choices that were never difficult
to make
over causes that one
could not take.
And questions that were
best left unanswered.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
GOPAL - II
Today that old patient of mine I wrote about last month came walking to me.
You can read about him here
I am happy for this man as much as I can be. And I feel as proud of this man as much as I can allow myself to be. And this makes me promise to myself not to waste time on things and people who will never give you a chance in life, or understand your motives or intentions. 3 odd months back, we had an alcoholic who had seizures persistently who we took to be Rum Fits. Associated with an undeniable unconscious urge to let these patients be, we offered him the usual for delirium tremens. Somehow, somewhere, he did not recover and was transferred from bed 13 to bed 49 and given more than a cautionary glance than subconsciously reserved for these people. Somehow somewhere, it did not look like he had an ordinary problem most young alcoholics face. We did a CT Scan. Big Subarachnoid hemorrhage..and something something more... Something was missing. My SR Dr P suggested we start him on Low Molecular Heparin despite there being a hemorrhage. We got a MR Venography done. His CT Scan and MRI concurred. He had those bleeds with infarcts spread over 70 odd percent of his brain area dotting it like full cherries on a cake. He had loss of flow void in the sagittal veins and an empty delta sign. Diagnosis: Cortical Vein Thrombosis. To see it with alcohol was a rare condition. Only 3 patients have been reported so far the world over. Why he had it, what predisposing factors he had to have it, we havent managed to find any.
He was bed ridden, aspirated, fetid bed sores oozing serum from all over his body. I dare say he was being treated correctly but not being looked after correctly. His mother was a woman who would not listen to any advice. We have no nursing care in our hospital. Its not possible, to have them, with the number of admissions and the precarious work distribution we have. That was when I took over. I am not bragging about my achievement but I just want to say that proper instruction to attendants about basic hygiene and physiotherapy...these two are cornerstones of management of any neurosurgical patient. Life and Haryana have hardened me into an indomitable woman, unafraid of anything. I went after the parents, his pyorrhoea I ensured went with at least two Listerine scrubbings. I howled at the mother when she fed him water without lifting his head up increasing chances of aspiration, took care so he did not smell of pee that he did despite the catheter.Mostly i shouted at his parents, day in and day out. I could not do these things, looking after 20 odd patients lying any time. So I made sure my 'orders were obeyed'. In short, I did become what I hate being called the most...A Sister...the Staff Nurse. And a most angry one at that. Fortunately his parents got scared and did what I tole them to do. He would lie for days on one side of his body being able to move nothing but his mouth and eyes. His hands were clasped tight, and he almost always had his wrists clenched.
He recovered. His bed sores stopped oozing and started to dry. He stopped passing loose stools that continuously soiled his undersides. I remember the way I used to ask him everyday if he could move his hand. He used to sat Tch Tch in a way I cannot forget. There was a dogged way about him, a different light in his eyes. I never asked why he went binge drinking for three continuous days at a friend's marriage party. Earlier, he drank almost everyday. But he did not smoke. His father was a very docile man who was literally bent twice from the burden of his son's disease. He always had a sad smile on his face. His mother graduated, under my rather uncomfortable and voluble appraisals of her inefficiency as a mother to someone who started on his physiotherapy vigorously.
Last time I wrote that previous blog he continued to lie down in bed and was massaged by his entire family all the time. I asked him if he could sit. He said no. I ordered him to sit. Slowly he sat for the first time which you can see in that picture I took of him. That was the first time he sat in three months he said. I asked him why he did not do it earlier. To which he said he did not do it because no one had ordered him to sit so far.
What have I become.
Yesterday he came walking to the OPD. Meanwhile his father during the process of taking care of him suffered a left basal ganglia bleed. And barely recognizes his son he used to look after. But Gopal came walking in full glory today. He is a handsome man, with a beautiful daughter. And very very proud. Something about him doesn't look ordinary, commonplace. I don't know what it is. He doesn't drink anymore, and is about to start work as a photographer. His mother came upto me and ran her hands on my head blessing me yesterday.
I will take his snap next time to show what a remarkable man he has become. I am not talking about a case of Cortical venous Thrombosis we are trying to get published with minimal homework and preparation. I am talking about the human effort and kindness. About faith and hope, and how such lives get transformed after a tragedy if taken in the right way.
With Gopal, I learn few things. And one saying by Einstein rings loudest in my ears. I am clueless what sort of a person I will become tomorrow, especially with the iron fist I am developing sans any feminine streak, almost like a man. But I hope I will at least preserve the humanity in me. And that I become a good doctor. That is the most I will be happy with.
The secret to happiness lies in attaching oneself to something, not someone.
You can read about him here
I am happy for this man as much as I can be. And I feel as proud of this man as much as I can allow myself to be. And this makes me promise to myself not to waste time on things and people who will never give you a chance in life, or understand your motives or intentions. 3 odd months back, we had an alcoholic who had seizures persistently who we took to be Rum Fits. Associated with an undeniable unconscious urge to let these patients be, we offered him the usual for delirium tremens. Somehow, somewhere, he did not recover and was transferred from bed 13 to bed 49 and given more than a cautionary glance than subconsciously reserved for these people. Somehow somewhere, it did not look like he had an ordinary problem most young alcoholics face. We did a CT Scan. Big Subarachnoid hemorrhage..and something something more... Something was missing. My SR Dr P suggested we start him on Low Molecular Heparin despite there being a hemorrhage. We got a MR Venography done. His CT Scan and MRI concurred. He had those bleeds with infarcts spread over 70 odd percent of his brain area dotting it like full cherries on a cake. He had loss of flow void in the sagittal veins and an empty delta sign. Diagnosis: Cortical Vein Thrombosis. To see it with alcohol was a rare condition. Only 3 patients have been reported so far the world over. Why he had it, what predisposing factors he had to have it, we havent managed to find any.
He was bed ridden, aspirated, fetid bed sores oozing serum from all over his body. I dare say he was being treated correctly but not being looked after correctly. His mother was a woman who would not listen to any advice. We have no nursing care in our hospital. Its not possible, to have them, with the number of admissions and the precarious work distribution we have. That was when I took over. I am not bragging about my achievement but I just want to say that proper instruction to attendants about basic hygiene and physiotherapy...these two are cornerstones of management of any neurosurgical patient. Life and Haryana have hardened me into an indomitable woman, unafraid of anything. I went after the parents, his pyorrhoea I ensured went with at least two Listerine scrubbings. I howled at the mother when she fed him water without lifting his head up increasing chances of aspiration, took care so he did not smell of pee that he did despite the catheter.Mostly i shouted at his parents, day in and day out. I could not do these things, looking after 20 odd patients lying any time. So I made sure my 'orders were obeyed'. In short, I did become what I hate being called the most...A Sister...the Staff Nurse. And a most angry one at that. Fortunately his parents got scared and did what I tole them to do. He would lie for days on one side of his body being able to move nothing but his mouth and eyes. His hands were clasped tight, and he almost always had his wrists clenched.
He recovered. His bed sores stopped oozing and started to dry. He stopped passing loose stools that continuously soiled his undersides. I remember the way I used to ask him everyday if he could move his hand. He used to sat Tch Tch in a way I cannot forget. There was a dogged way about him, a different light in his eyes. I never asked why he went binge drinking for three continuous days at a friend's marriage party. Earlier, he drank almost everyday. But he did not smoke. His father was a very docile man who was literally bent twice from the burden of his son's disease. He always had a sad smile on his face. His mother graduated, under my rather uncomfortable and voluble appraisals of her inefficiency as a mother to someone who started on his physiotherapy vigorously.
Last time I wrote that previous blog he continued to lie down in bed and was massaged by his entire family all the time. I asked him if he could sit. He said no. I ordered him to sit. Slowly he sat for the first time which you can see in that picture I took of him. That was the first time he sat in three months he said. I asked him why he did not do it earlier. To which he said he did not do it because no one had ordered him to sit so far.
What have I become.
Yesterday he came walking to the OPD. Meanwhile his father during the process of taking care of him suffered a left basal ganglia bleed. And barely recognizes his son he used to look after. But Gopal came walking in full glory today. He is a handsome man, with a beautiful daughter. And very very proud. Something about him doesn't look ordinary, commonplace. I don't know what it is. He doesn't drink anymore, and is about to start work as a photographer. His mother came upto me and ran her hands on my head blessing me yesterday.
I will take his snap next time to show what a remarkable man he has become. I am not talking about a case of Cortical venous Thrombosis we are trying to get published with minimal homework and preparation. I am talking about the human effort and kindness. About faith and hope, and how such lives get transformed after a tragedy if taken in the right way.
With Gopal, I learn few things. And one saying by Einstein rings loudest in my ears. I am clueless what sort of a person I will become tomorrow, especially with the iron fist I am developing sans any feminine streak, almost like a man. But I hope I will at least preserve the humanity in me. And that I become a good doctor. That is the most I will be happy with.
The secret to happiness lies in attaching oneself to something, not someone.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Starting Rotation
We got together to start the Rotation. By a stroke of luck when 7 of us gather inside the HOD's office, in comes in most daring and my most lauded of them all. Proff D. That made things half as easier. He changes the air around him when he comes in. And most of all, he is not scared.
The worst part is the thesis. How to complete and when to submit. We have been asked to submit a roster on how to do it. I hope we do it.
If this does not pull through, we are even then going to get rotated in ICU. Thats an understanding between Proff D and my Proff H, childhood friends, buddies. Its heartening to just see these two walk together in the campus. You get a feeling all is well. Even when they bicker about a case.
No second thoughts. Will visit Cuttack to finish a chapter. And come back and start a new life.
I hope I have the physical stamina to match it. And the capacity to block certain things out of my life. I am a doctor. It would be enough for me to be able to do justification to just that.
The worst part is the thesis. How to complete and when to submit. We have been asked to submit a roster on how to do it. I hope we do it.
If this does not pull through, we are even then going to get rotated in ICU. Thats an understanding between Proff D and my Proff H, childhood friends, buddies. Its heartening to just see these two walk together in the campus. You get a feeling all is well. Even when they bicker about a case.
No second thoughts. Will visit Cuttack to finish a chapter. And come back and start a new life.
I hope I have the physical stamina to match it. And the capacity to block certain things out of my life. I am a doctor. It would be enough for me to be able to do justification to just that.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Start...Turn Off...Shutting Down....
How easy it must have been,
to keep a promise, to hide
under the veiled attempts of humor,
the tears inside.
I sleep-wake-work-sleep
in an endless loop, the insides of that blackened
hearth, in a damp swamp,
of disgust, of hope all misplaced, misattempts at
claiming that happiness I thought
I deserved.
It takes a second to say,
needlessly,
it wasn't so difficult to forget, or get over.
A dream that we three would be together,
and he will finally say to her,
how much he loved her, treasured her,
yet he ran away, and stayed away.
And she, uremic with happiness,
will draw her knobbed hands, knitting
sweaters for laborers, baskets for
orphans,
will draw that semi orphan,that rickety
chap into her parched bosom.
And things would be in a shape,
neither too happy, nor too sad,
but just okay, when she would herself return,
limping from Work, she would find him sitting
and thinking,
And he would look up and smile,
and a thousand fireflies would light
the room, filled with dark secrets of the night.
Till the rains of that overdunged,
underdrained city will drown,
every tear, every fear, into a heap of
rotten river marsh,
which she buried her head into,
when he had asked her,
if she felt like killing herself
because of him,
like his mother.
And she could not explain, why this
why that. She would wait, she thought
For time to come.
It never did.
There was always a Dad.
A lifetime, of not fitting into,
anything else, because, for her,
there was a situation, she
couldn't explain, couldn't fight
until the night when she bent her head,
at the altar of The Over.
Bent her shadow, that she had left
to hover over that luckless widow,
and her lonely son,
and she took it and put it into
her wretched soul,
to be slammed down to 'tiresome'
in the name of propriety.
Because, now
the swallows had flown, taken a new look
of Sky Blue skins rubbing across,
a grey western shore...claiming
dreams to be shined, on the altar of
The Forever.
to keep a promise, to hide
under the veiled attempts of humor,
the tears inside.
I sleep-wake-work-sleep
in an endless loop, the insides of that blackened
hearth, in a damp swamp,
of disgust, of hope all misplaced, misattempts at
claiming that happiness I thought
I deserved.
It takes a second to say,
needlessly,
it wasn't so difficult to forget, or get over.
A dream that we three would be together,
and he will finally say to her,
how much he loved her, treasured her,
yet he ran away, and stayed away.
And she, uremic with happiness,
will draw her knobbed hands, knitting
sweaters for laborers, baskets for
orphans,
will draw that semi orphan,that rickety
chap into her parched bosom.
And things would be in a shape,
neither too happy, nor too sad,
but just okay, when she would herself return,
limping from Work, she would find him sitting
and thinking,
And he would look up and smile,
and a thousand fireflies would light
the room, filled with dark secrets of the night.
Till the rains of that overdunged,
underdrained city will drown,
every tear, every fear, into a heap of
rotten river marsh,
which she buried her head into,
when he had asked her,
if she felt like killing herself
because of him,
like his mother.
And she could not explain, why this
why that. She would wait, she thought
For time to come.
It never did.
There was always a Dad.
A lifetime, of not fitting into,
anything else, because, for her,
there was a situation, she
couldn't explain, couldn't fight
until the night when she bent her head,
at the altar of The Over.
Bent her shadow, that she had left
to hover over that luckless widow,
and her lonely son,
and she took it and put it into
her wretched soul,
to be slammed down to 'tiresome'
in the name of propriety.
Because, now
the swallows had flown, taken a new look
of Sky Blue skins rubbing across,
a grey western shore...claiming
dreams to be shined, on the altar of
The Forever.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
For Whom The Bell Doesn't toll....
Endless bickering with staff, doctors and the 'System'. For a moment when I get these people I treat for sometime in a flashback, I wonder what I have been doing. I am not saying I do more, but I give all the percentage of my capacity to my job. I am passionate about a proper and systematic workup, and months of doing Emergency duty have now taught me some rude truths about Indian System of Medicine. But I am not going to speak about that now. I want to talk about the 'Me' that has sunk down somewhere behind the 'Madam' and 'Docsaab' business.
When I work for whatever length of time, and I return, I don't know but I am drained. Not physically but mentally. The hagglings behind a family who decide to do nothing about a sick child, the Blood Bank attendant refusing to give blood to 'Non emergency patients'...the typical example of who sent that day were 2 patients with Refractory Heart Failure secondary to severe Anemia, a patient who had to be dialyzed the next day...and a patient of Hydrocephalus to be operated the next day. I was picking cudgels against a 50 year old man at the other end of the line talking in a tone my friends would never know existed in me. Thats normally the aggressive animal i turn into when I treat patients. I am fast, swift, but angry. And sometimes its required to keep attendants on their toes. Whatever.
After threatening these people of things like sending a written complaint forwarded by my Professor ( I use his name unabashedly in places like this where I feel a moral code of conduct is violated...I don't know if he would approve...but that day all 4 of them got their BTs..I was feeling almost physically abusive towards the doctor who denied Blood transfusions to these patients saying Blood Bank had issued precise instructions not to do 'Routine' Blood Transfusions after 2 pm. I asked that man to define what 'Routine Blood Transfusions meant' and was it similar to the 'Routine urine and Blood examinations that were done in Central Laboratory'. He kept blabbering. I told him the precise indications of all 4 patients for whom I had requisitioned a B.T. And then I asked him to point out which one he thought was routine. He started about telling how the new Dr in Charge of the Blood bank was the one to decide this and now that she had gone out to the emergency and could not receive a call so that the onus of everything fell on him. Next I asked him with all the anger that was bursting through my lungs.
'What is your name uncle ji? I will personally come to visit you and Dr N in thirty minutes with a letter from my Professor.'
'Madamji, send the requisitions again. I will see what I can do about them'
In 2 hours, all my patients had BTs and were as usual bickering with the sisters about the drop count.'
Life is that pathetic here. And it takes someone to pick up the cudgel to show these people to be aware if not at least be sensitive to the needs of such a population that comes under our care. And I tell you...its not easy. You go too far with this anger bubbling in your veins and you are more likely than not to have someone coming at you. You have to stay careful of these people.
Change in this group of people is not possible from bringing it about within them. Because its nearly impossible to be that sharp and beat so many people taking an aim at you. Change can more rationally be bought by being above them, ad being withing them. Something like the 'chadmavesh' the incognito principle of all kings in the past. But I am not sure if principles remain the same once you reach up there. The higher you go, the tighter the snare gets.
I love that pounding thing in my head when I manage to bring these ridiculous fools to their knees. But what saddens me is that I am speaking to a 50 year old man who is tied by a similar snare, though from a difficult angle. I would have no personal enmity with him. But I would always remember his voice. And he would always remember my name. I hate myself then, for what we become to bring about some change.
I am drained by these conflicts. When I walk home I am usually happy about some patient or the other. I don't know if the picture I am projecting is that of a dictator. My Professor is just the opposite. And he doesn't know how I am cleaning the system under him. I don't know if he will approve. I am quite clear that only those people who cannot do without an admission on an emergency day will be admitted. A cent-percent diagnosis in at least 80 percent is my target. More importantly, a 70 percent full treatment. No fuss treatment, rigid adherence to therapy. Almost disciplined. ( What a pity none of my juniors have a good handwriting...I cant tolerate dirty treatment charts...)
What does that make me? What has that made me? And what have I lost in the process of getting this..The answers to this are beyond me. I just promise this to myself. That I will be honest to the core. And fearless. And that no situation should arise when my greed for something will overpower my resolve to act on these lines.
I am striving to make my unit as organized as possible. Some people tend to believe I am against admissions and work up. To a big extent I appreciate intuitive clinical acumen over the test oriented, investigation backed, analytical one. I am also against the idea of mooting for the diagnosis so that by the time we are patting each other's backs over a diagnosis we made, the patent's family have spent every cent of their earning on the tests we order and have none left for treatment. to this extent, I would ask for a B12 challenge with followup rather than an investigation sent for vitB12 and Folic acid to some lab...In any case..we are treating nutritional anemia...My Professor does this wherever he can and its something I will take to my graves.
Dont make the treatment sicker than the disease. And I am ready to go to any extent to safeguard these people when it comes to a situation when people either by commission or omission of an act, do these things that hurts people more than it heals them. Be it as a knack for 'following the trend' or be it to stand up against 'This is the irrefutable diagnosis'. And if I am right ( and that will require acquiring knowledge), I will speak in a similar note of highheadedness to anyone placed anywhere in the system. And be ready to face the consequences.
Similar was a day when I returned home in a happy mood after thinking I had broken the ice with someone. I wont go into details how hectic those 3 hours turned out to be. But basically, my adrenaline was pumping. Checked room, checked computer screen. A mail was staring. With some links on it for writing a thesis plan. " Unless you want to wallow in self pity or slather yourself with the latter, check these links." Later I learnt it was meant to be in humor. But I was not in a mood for it. Maybe the evening had been scheming all along. It brought back some memories. And then everything fell apart. But in the process the vision got clearer...
I am a little surefooted today. I make reasonably good diagnosis. And today I say this that leaving other things apart, if I manage to become even half the doctor I think I should be, I will be happy not to get anything else in my life I have wanted. These people who drain me, this profession that put me on a backfoot every time a chance came where I should have accorded priority to my life, I better get good at this.
Today an incredibly sweet woman hugged me before leaving the Emergency. I was reeling from fatigue from having slept 5 hours in the last 72 hours. My personal life is like the fragments of a shell that has burst, oozing fresh wounds everywhere. Some where then, I did not automatically forward these blessings to the address I normally send them to whenever someone blesses me in a way that I appreciate. I kept that thing to myself. And tried to feel what it feels to be a little selfish about blessings.
And you know, I felt sadder than before.
Maybe I got to think about this 'Wallow' part....
Smiles....
When I work for whatever length of time, and I return, I don't know but I am drained. Not physically but mentally. The hagglings behind a family who decide to do nothing about a sick child, the Blood Bank attendant refusing to give blood to 'Non emergency patients'...the typical example of who sent that day were 2 patients with Refractory Heart Failure secondary to severe Anemia, a patient who had to be dialyzed the next day...and a patient of Hydrocephalus to be operated the next day. I was picking cudgels against a 50 year old man at the other end of the line talking in a tone my friends would never know existed in me. Thats normally the aggressive animal i turn into when I treat patients. I am fast, swift, but angry. And sometimes its required to keep attendants on their toes. Whatever.
After threatening these people of things like sending a written complaint forwarded by my Professor ( I use his name unabashedly in places like this where I feel a moral code of conduct is violated...I don't know if he would approve...but that day all 4 of them got their BTs..I was feeling almost physically abusive towards the doctor who denied Blood transfusions to these patients saying Blood Bank had issued precise instructions not to do 'Routine' Blood Transfusions after 2 pm. I asked that man to define what 'Routine Blood Transfusions meant' and was it similar to the 'Routine urine and Blood examinations that were done in Central Laboratory'. He kept blabbering. I told him the precise indications of all 4 patients for whom I had requisitioned a B.T. And then I asked him to point out which one he thought was routine. He started about telling how the new Dr in Charge of the Blood bank was the one to decide this and now that she had gone out to the emergency and could not receive a call so that the onus of everything fell on him. Next I asked him with all the anger that was bursting through my lungs.
'What is your name uncle ji? I will personally come to visit you and Dr N in thirty minutes with a letter from my Professor.'
'Madamji, send the requisitions again. I will see what I can do about them'
In 2 hours, all my patients had BTs and were as usual bickering with the sisters about the drop count.'
Life is that pathetic here. And it takes someone to pick up the cudgel to show these people to be aware if not at least be sensitive to the needs of such a population that comes under our care. And I tell you...its not easy. You go too far with this anger bubbling in your veins and you are more likely than not to have someone coming at you. You have to stay careful of these people.
Change in this group of people is not possible from bringing it about within them. Because its nearly impossible to be that sharp and beat so many people taking an aim at you. Change can more rationally be bought by being above them, ad being withing them. Something like the 'chadmavesh' the incognito principle of all kings in the past. But I am not sure if principles remain the same once you reach up there. The higher you go, the tighter the snare gets.
I love that pounding thing in my head when I manage to bring these ridiculous fools to their knees. But what saddens me is that I am speaking to a 50 year old man who is tied by a similar snare, though from a difficult angle. I would have no personal enmity with him. But I would always remember his voice. And he would always remember my name. I hate myself then, for what we become to bring about some change.
I am drained by these conflicts. When I walk home I am usually happy about some patient or the other. I don't know if the picture I am projecting is that of a dictator. My Professor is just the opposite. And he doesn't know how I am cleaning the system under him. I don't know if he will approve. I am quite clear that only those people who cannot do without an admission on an emergency day will be admitted. A cent-percent diagnosis in at least 80 percent is my target. More importantly, a 70 percent full treatment. No fuss treatment, rigid adherence to therapy. Almost disciplined. ( What a pity none of my juniors have a good handwriting...I cant tolerate dirty treatment charts...)
What does that make me? What has that made me? And what have I lost in the process of getting this..The answers to this are beyond me. I just promise this to myself. That I will be honest to the core. And fearless. And that no situation should arise when my greed for something will overpower my resolve to act on these lines.
I am striving to make my unit as organized as possible. Some people tend to believe I am against admissions and work up. To a big extent I appreciate intuitive clinical acumen over the test oriented, investigation backed, analytical one. I am also against the idea of mooting for the diagnosis so that by the time we are patting each other's backs over a diagnosis we made, the patent's family have spent every cent of their earning on the tests we order and have none left for treatment. to this extent, I would ask for a B12 challenge with followup rather than an investigation sent for vitB12 and Folic acid to some lab...In any case..we are treating nutritional anemia...My Professor does this wherever he can and its something I will take to my graves.
Dont make the treatment sicker than the disease. And I am ready to go to any extent to safeguard these people when it comes to a situation when people either by commission or omission of an act, do these things that hurts people more than it heals them. Be it as a knack for 'following the trend' or be it to stand up against 'This is the irrefutable diagnosis'. And if I am right ( and that will require acquiring knowledge), I will speak in a similar note of highheadedness to anyone placed anywhere in the system. And be ready to face the consequences.
Similar was a day when I returned home in a happy mood after thinking I had broken the ice with someone. I wont go into details how hectic those 3 hours turned out to be. But basically, my adrenaline was pumping. Checked room, checked computer screen. A mail was staring. With some links on it for writing a thesis plan. " Unless you want to wallow in self pity or slather yourself with the latter, check these links." Later I learnt it was meant to be in humor. But I was not in a mood for it. Maybe the evening had been scheming all along. It brought back some memories. And then everything fell apart. But in the process the vision got clearer...
I am a little surefooted today. I make reasonably good diagnosis. And today I say this that leaving other things apart, if I manage to become even half the doctor I think I should be, I will be happy not to get anything else in my life I have wanted. These people who drain me, this profession that put me on a backfoot every time a chance came where I should have accorded priority to my life, I better get good at this.
Today an incredibly sweet woman hugged me before leaving the Emergency. I was reeling from fatigue from having slept 5 hours in the last 72 hours. My personal life is like the fragments of a shell that has burst, oozing fresh wounds everywhere. Some where then, I did not automatically forward these blessings to the address I normally send them to whenever someone blesses me in a way that I appreciate. I kept that thing to myself. And tried to feel what it feels to be a little selfish about blessings.
And you know, I felt sadder than before.
Maybe I got to think about this 'Wallow' part....
Smiles....
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
When the Fireflies Died....
She had told this story to him that night they took a walk by the side of the river. This person she would never touch, never kiss and never be able to see again in her life. It would take her 4 years to realize that this man she would give up her life for, never wanted it. That he did not love her back. But then they walked, as friends, talking about their families, his dreams, her hopes. They had just met recently. He wore a black t shirt with a grey six pocket. She was in a black dress, black moccasins on her velvet legs, a hint of kohl, and her hair drawn into a ponytail halfway up her head. She had told him the story of the Little Mermaid then. He had still not told her he loved her. That would come much later on a teary eyed August night. And out of the corners of her eyes she saw fireflies dancing after the tropical showers. She had always loved fireflies, they were angels who crept into her room at night, and told her everything would be fine, before a hot examination day.
Later, much later, she ended up on a parched land, her profession taking her into a place where people bowed before her, were scared of her. That girl had changed. She had cut her hair, she swore at men, she drove hordes of rugged people out of the premises with a single shout. One look from her would send men looking down if they had done something wrong. She saw to it that those who depended on her got what they wanted. She looked different. Very different. But deep in her heart, she was still the same girl, still madly in love with that boy she had walked along that night, throwing caution to the winds that her parents informers would be watching, that it would be known that the daughter of so and so in town was seen walking with a stranger.
The mermaid fell in love with a human prince she had saved from drowning when there was a storm and the ship carrying him capsized. She braved the hurricane all night and only when the storm abated did she put him on the shore. On the first sign of humans approaching him and inquiring after him, which she watched behind some rocks did she turn back to her home. She could not keep his mind off him. And since it was impossible to get to know him, she went to a witch to get legs for her fins. The witch said it would be dangerous...that once she turned a human being with legs each time she took a step it would be like walking on a razor blade. She did not care. She wanted to see that prince from the Earth world. The witch took three drops of blood from her breast, a toad, some twigs, and made a potion. For her fees she took the mermaid's sweet voice and asked her to swim up the ocean and take the potion with the first rays of the sun. With the promise she would become a human.
And this kohl eyed girl could not fall out of love because she chose not to. It was not an excuse. It was her life. And one which had been grotesquely misshaped out of a very odd sense of humor life played with her. But it didn't mean the end. She was and would be only person he took his first steps with. She was the one who he told he did not go to parties with friends because he did not have money even for a dutch treat...That he had once one and a half cigarette left. And no one could change that silence, that magic. No one else could stand in that night watching fireflies dance they way they did that night. Not much later when he wanted to change history with geography, she allowed him to do it. Because he believed in never turning back. She should have known the last time he walked away in a faded maroon shirt and a jeans he had been wearing for 8 years. Now he wears designer labels matched with his new love. And she still watches out for him somewhere.
Her mistake into thinking she would ever be able to change someone's insecurities were given a rude slap in the hands of a queer word called 'Situations'. But she stood for a long time, watching out for him, praying for him, even after getting every indication that 'Distance' is the easiest excuse. Maybe she thought, if he is so uncertain about giving her any happiness, and is suffering, that he would rather have reasons to condone her, and things would be better for him. Weird thoughts, things that come to mind when someone is totally desperate. Its unimaginable. Sometimes your faith cannot go that long a way. Never trust love to be that strong. If the other end is weak, the thin thread will fall. That was the thing with her case. She was too busy idealizing the setup without knowing what was about to happen soon enough.
Now she banks on her memories to fade just like Little Mermaid did...She could not kill the prince to become a mermaid again....And as the first rays of the sun fell on the feet she had magically got on her limbs, she decided killing him to become a mermaid again was no option. She could not cry because that power was lost. She had given her voice and in exchange for the limbs she got by which she walked to see her prince. Her family implored with the witch to bring back their daughter and the witch relented with the condition that she could become a mermaid again if she killed the prince she loved...She had to stab him in the heart with the first rays of the sun. And the blood that would flow down to her feet would turn them into a fin. And she would become a mermaid again.
She remembered the time when he hung up after he asked her ' How much money do your parents have...' She knew things would change. Here he was, weighing the cost of their love with her parents money. Stupid she was, she was truthful to him to the core...they were on either side of a peninsula...Her answer numbed him...And that was how it all began. 'Shit I have nothing'.. And the endless days when he would not utter a word. They could not meet. She had taken the promise he should not come to meet her until he found the path he was following. They were living their moments of happiness on a fast ending quota of savings on his side and her pocket money she had saved to buy a guitar because she sang rather well. She did not want her parents role in it. She wanted to show that two of a kind from four of their kind would find happiness together. How wrong she was.
The mermaid was the maid of honor at the wedding of the prince. He married a woman he thought had saved his life, because she found him unconscious on the sea beach after a dangerous storm in which his boat capsized. He did not know it was the Little Mermaid who had braved the storm all night keeping him afloat against the dangerous waves. She saw them asleep in their nuptial chamber. When she had found out he was going to marry a lady who was merely passing by after she had carefully laid him on the beach in the morning she tried to cry but couldn't. It was one human trait she could not have. She lied next to him through out the night watching his gentle breath rise and fall. The morning was approaching.
What followed was odd. His periodic outbursts when he would constantly remind her of their backgrounds. And no matter what she said couldn't do anything..They were so far away they didn't even have an idea about the scent of one another. She tried to tell him her future was with his. But he was unsure he loved her anymore, worse, if he loved her at all. At that time she was spinning stories how she would walk with him to take him to meet his father, someone he had always shared a difficult relationship with. But he was beginning to find her intrusive, her attempts to connect him to his mother were doubted by him to be trying to put him on the peg. Her attempts to infuse some of the love fast dying out of their relationship were met with resistance. He decided to snuff it out.
The sun was rising, and the first line of a ray stilettoed slowly into the room through a pane. If she was to kill the prince, she was to kill him with the first rays of the sun. She raised the knife. There was no going back. She would die if she did not kill him. And no one would know she died a human death because she would dissolve into foam just like all mermaids did. If she killed him she would live..and turn into a mermaid and return to her loving parents.
For him the issue was that she tried to make him guilty. She did not know how it could happen. What she wanted to know is that how was it that he could find solace in other peoples company to come and find small faults with her. She wanted him to be happy, but couldn't find a way to make him. He did not want to meet her, but he opened up to his deepest secrets with her, or at least so she thought. There was so much chaos, so many things occuring all at once. He was going through a period of clash.She wanted to be there for him through then. He eventually came out of it, like a car out of a Car Wash. And the small label of hers that was stuck in some insignificant place on his life was wiped off without a trace. He went on and she kept loving him. Through days when he would burst on her if she accidentally asked his whereabouts. She was distressed why he chose to throw her away just like that after having once said he wanted to spend all his living moments with her. She was frustrated, she screamed, ranted, swore, lost her temper, went ugly. Her madness drove him further away. It became another reason why he could not be with her. Now he had an alibi. That every way she reacted was so unnatural. She desperately wanted to tell him how much she loved him. But one part of her know he would perhaps not be happy with her. She could not accompany him to his greatest joys. She was required in more dangerous jobs. He sought solace elsewhere. In a land of plenty, he took an unquestioning beauty. And they started a happy life. And began their 'Ever after' chapter. As for her....
The mermaid took one last look at him before the sun's rays fell on his heart, then, instead of bringing it down on his heart, she threw it away. And kissed the prince one last time. The sun's rays bore through her human legs, and they started to dissolve. She kept on watching him in his sleep. And just before she was to turn entirely into foam, she mouthed " I love you, my prince". And a single drop of human tear testimony to her presence dropped out of her eye and fell on the sleeping prince's chest....And she vanished into nothingness.
The fact that she would always continue to love him. And she knew. There would not be another person who could love him more than she loved him. She stood long after the curtains had fallen. And he was sleeping in his new love's arms. And she took a bow and disappeared into nothingness.....
How much money does it take to buy happiness ? And how much love is enough to get one's love back ? How is it possible to decide that someone you have never wanted to see, never wanted to be a part of your life, never wanted to settle a quarrel with, never wanted to own, is not compatible with you ? Why is happiness only in his quota, and not hers? Is the only interpretation of love is that to be near some body? Can distance really make that big a difference? What exactly does life want from people?
The compass and the note she had given him 4 years back had stated. 'Find your direction in life. Go wherever you can. But if you go that long enough, maybe you will realize you have ended up right next to where you started.'
One can never find an answer to these questions. I would wait for their respective lives to unfold....May be she will find her destiny somewhere else. And may be this is what was always meant to be.
Later, much later, she ended up on a parched land, her profession taking her into a place where people bowed before her, were scared of her. That girl had changed. She had cut her hair, she swore at men, she drove hordes of rugged people out of the premises with a single shout. One look from her would send men looking down if they had done something wrong. She saw to it that those who depended on her got what they wanted. She looked different. Very different. But deep in her heart, she was still the same girl, still madly in love with that boy she had walked along that night, throwing caution to the winds that her parents informers would be watching, that it would be known that the daughter of so and so in town was seen walking with a stranger.
The mermaid fell in love with a human prince she had saved from drowning when there was a storm and the ship carrying him capsized. She braved the hurricane all night and only when the storm abated did she put him on the shore. On the first sign of humans approaching him and inquiring after him, which she watched behind some rocks did she turn back to her home. She could not keep his mind off him. And since it was impossible to get to know him, she went to a witch to get legs for her fins. The witch said it would be dangerous...that once she turned a human being with legs each time she took a step it would be like walking on a razor blade. She did not care. She wanted to see that prince from the Earth world. The witch took three drops of blood from her breast, a toad, some twigs, and made a potion. For her fees she took the mermaid's sweet voice and asked her to swim up the ocean and take the potion with the first rays of the sun. With the promise she would become a human.
And this kohl eyed girl could not fall out of love because she chose not to. It was not an excuse. It was her life. And one which had been grotesquely misshaped out of a very odd sense of humor life played with her. But it didn't mean the end. She was and would be only person he took his first steps with. She was the one who he told he did not go to parties with friends because he did not have money even for a dutch treat...That he had once one and a half cigarette left. And no one could change that silence, that magic. No one else could stand in that night watching fireflies dance they way they did that night. Not much later when he wanted to change history with geography, she allowed him to do it. Because he believed in never turning back. She should have known the last time he walked away in a faded maroon shirt and a jeans he had been wearing for 8 years. Now he wears designer labels matched with his new love. And she still watches out for him somewhere.
Her mistake into thinking she would ever be able to change someone's insecurities were given a rude slap in the hands of a queer word called 'Situations'. But she stood for a long time, watching out for him, praying for him, even after getting every indication that 'Distance' is the easiest excuse. Maybe she thought, if he is so uncertain about giving her any happiness, and is suffering, that he would rather have reasons to condone her, and things would be better for him. Weird thoughts, things that come to mind when someone is totally desperate. Its unimaginable. Sometimes your faith cannot go that long a way. Never trust love to be that strong. If the other end is weak, the thin thread will fall. That was the thing with her case. She was too busy idealizing the setup without knowing what was about to happen soon enough.
Now she banks on her memories to fade just like Little Mermaid did...She could not kill the prince to become a mermaid again....And as the first rays of the sun fell on the feet she had magically got on her limbs, she decided killing him to become a mermaid again was no option. She could not cry because that power was lost. She had given her voice and in exchange for the limbs she got by which she walked to see her prince. Her family implored with the witch to bring back their daughter and the witch relented with the condition that she could become a mermaid again if she killed the prince she loved...She had to stab him in the heart with the first rays of the sun. And the blood that would flow down to her feet would turn them into a fin. And she would become a mermaid again.
She remembered the time when he hung up after he asked her ' How much money do your parents have...' She knew things would change. Here he was, weighing the cost of their love with her parents money. Stupid she was, she was truthful to him to the core...they were on either side of a peninsula...Her answer numbed him...And that was how it all began. 'Shit I have nothing'.. And the endless days when he would not utter a word. They could not meet. She had taken the promise he should not come to meet her until he found the path he was following. They were living their moments of happiness on a fast ending quota of savings on his side and her pocket money she had saved to buy a guitar because she sang rather well. She did not want her parents role in it. She wanted to show that two of a kind from four of their kind would find happiness together. How wrong she was.
The mermaid was the maid of honor at the wedding of the prince. He married a woman he thought had saved his life, because she found him unconscious on the sea beach after a dangerous storm in which his boat capsized. He did not know it was the Little Mermaid who had braved the storm all night keeping him afloat against the dangerous waves. She saw them asleep in their nuptial chamber. When she had found out he was going to marry a lady who was merely passing by after she had carefully laid him on the beach in the morning she tried to cry but couldn't. It was one human trait she could not have. She lied next to him through out the night watching his gentle breath rise and fall. The morning was approaching.
What followed was odd. His periodic outbursts when he would constantly remind her of their backgrounds. And no matter what she said couldn't do anything..They were so far away they didn't even have an idea about the scent of one another. She tried to tell him her future was with his. But he was unsure he loved her anymore, worse, if he loved her at all. At that time she was spinning stories how she would walk with him to take him to meet his father, someone he had always shared a difficult relationship with. But he was beginning to find her intrusive, her attempts to connect him to his mother were doubted by him to be trying to put him on the peg. Her attempts to infuse some of the love fast dying out of their relationship were met with resistance. He decided to snuff it out.
The sun was rising, and the first line of a ray stilettoed slowly into the room through a pane. If she was to kill the prince, she was to kill him with the first rays of the sun. She raised the knife. There was no going back. She would die if she did not kill him. And no one would know she died a human death because she would dissolve into foam just like all mermaids did. If she killed him she would live..and turn into a mermaid and return to her loving parents.
For him the issue was that she tried to make him guilty. She did not know how it could happen. What she wanted to know is that how was it that he could find solace in other peoples company to come and find small faults with her. She wanted him to be happy, but couldn't find a way to make him. He did not want to meet her, but he opened up to his deepest secrets with her, or at least so she thought. There was so much chaos, so many things occuring all at once. He was going through a period of clash.She wanted to be there for him through then. He eventually came out of it, like a car out of a Car Wash. And the small label of hers that was stuck in some insignificant place on his life was wiped off without a trace. He went on and she kept loving him. Through days when he would burst on her if she accidentally asked his whereabouts. She was distressed why he chose to throw her away just like that after having once said he wanted to spend all his living moments with her. She was frustrated, she screamed, ranted, swore, lost her temper, went ugly. Her madness drove him further away. It became another reason why he could not be with her. Now he had an alibi. That every way she reacted was so unnatural. She desperately wanted to tell him how much she loved him. But one part of her know he would perhaps not be happy with her. She could not accompany him to his greatest joys. She was required in more dangerous jobs. He sought solace elsewhere. In a land of plenty, he took an unquestioning beauty. And they started a happy life. And began their 'Ever after' chapter. As for her....
The mermaid took one last look at him before the sun's rays fell on his heart, then, instead of bringing it down on his heart, she threw it away. And kissed the prince one last time. The sun's rays bore through her human legs, and they started to dissolve. She kept on watching him in his sleep. And just before she was to turn entirely into foam, she mouthed " I love you, my prince". And a single drop of human tear testimony to her presence dropped out of her eye and fell on the sleeping prince's chest....And she vanished into nothingness.
The fact that she would always continue to love him. And she knew. There would not be another person who could love him more than she loved him. She stood long after the curtains had fallen. And he was sleeping in his new love's arms. And she took a bow and disappeared into nothingness.....
How much money does it take to buy happiness ? And how much love is enough to get one's love back ? How is it possible to decide that someone you have never wanted to see, never wanted to be a part of your life, never wanted to settle a quarrel with, never wanted to own, is not compatible with you ? Why is happiness only in his quota, and not hers? Is the only interpretation of love is that to be near some body? Can distance really make that big a difference? What exactly does life want from people?
The compass and the note she had given him 4 years back had stated. 'Find your direction in life. Go wherever you can. But if you go that long enough, maybe you will realize you have ended up right next to where you started.'
One can never find an answer to these questions. I would wait for their respective lives to unfold....May be she will find her destiny somewhere else. And may be this is what was always meant to be.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
An English Education
" Did you read in a convent? " is an oft repeated question.....My Proff asked me recently.
Its perhaps the idea that people get when they say I have a good command over the language. G used to say he liked my vomity style of writing when I wrote the good old Appendixedmusings. Well I have a few things on my mind right now about that. But honestly I don't know.
I think I have an okay English. People have said the language you can master is the language you dream in. Well in the days when I used to dream extensively, in monochrome and polychrome, it was always English. I was never very good at expressing in Oriya, chiefly because I did not read that much Oriya. And I read quite a bit of English, still do, thanks to my sister who got all the books and gave it to me for reading. I used to live with my sister and grandmother. Our parents were mostly posted at different places which meant we basically looked out for each other. And by the amount of liberty this gave to two young women in that age it meant that when we went shopping we purchased Robert Ludlums and Fredrick Forsyths by the dozens, she often spending her entire pocket money of 6 months on them. We never bought Mills and Boons, and maybe just one or two Harold Robbins....My parents were worried what we did with so much books. But they could not do more than grumble a bit ( And certainly not be able to read any of them, the reason for which I understand now since I have taken Medicine)
It all began on a winter day in Cuttack.I never had a proper Red sweater for my uniform. The first one a bit 'Light Red'; the second was a bit ' Dark Red', and since Cuttack winters are a monthly affair where sweaters are worn for a month to be hastily cleaned and put in the cupboard, 3 sweaters worn for 8 months covered 8 years with remarkable efficiency.
So when my Principal called this girl from 4th standard to come and tell her experience about her trip to Delhi to collect a National Talent Scholarship, I was only worried the small hole in my sweater at the back of my elbow would not show itself to anyone. I spoke something or the other, what came to my mind, and after I spoke I saw her approach me her eyes glistening against that morning sun on my face. She picked me up to follow to the dias my heart thumping and praying she should not do anything stupid to my hand like shake it or something.
" Now I am happy that when my kids go to receive awards, they don't have any difference from the students of Convent or Stewart...At least they donot speak in broken English..." And up went my hand firmly held by her, half my body lifted off along with it, as she lifted mine like refrees do to a boxer who wins the game. Amidst the resounding claps, my heart thudded with shame. I did not behave properly with anyone at home those few days. The sweater was changed within the next week as I refused to go to school wearing it.
True, I was taught by tutors with a English background. My first English teacher was from Stewart School, the stalwart of all schools in Cuttack, the Big Brother school. I went to his huge study lined with about a few hundred dictionaries and thesaurus and the " Compact Oxford Dictionary of English Language", a one feet by half and 15 inches tall book. I sat edgily on his swivel chair. 'What is the meaning of Vocabulary?'
'Its Word Power, Sir'
'Very Good'
This followed a few more questions in English I could have answered 2 years back.
He took me in.
By then I had finished Gone With the Wind. He did not know that until much later when he asked me to comment on a line of poem.
My school was SCB Medical Public School. A small school in a compromised plot of land granted by the College authorities of the big one, SCB Medical College. It was built entirely out of a wish of the College Staff chiefly to have their kids read in a school that would be easy for them to pick up. Notable only for the admission test, which was the toughest in the city, a nice staff ( most of whom had left by the time I had grown enough for them), and best, the type of students every school would want ( like an entire class 90 percent of whose students played GK in a free period without being asked to...that was mine..the 98 batch). 70 percent of the students belonged to some Hospital worker, from the HOD Medicine to the Sweeper. Needless to say, it bagged more Limca Quizzes, Bournvita Quizzes and Debates than any other. I went into the latter, then I also had a voice. But I never proved good at Debates which had judges who looked for content. I always wrote my debates after the first two or three which my father helped me with. I mainly won where the judges perhaps looked for spontaneity. I mostly spoke extempore. And I did well in Science quizzes. Immaterial stuff but by 8th standard I was dreaming of using the prize cups as glasses, and even flower vases. And the number collected by me and my sister grew so much that they were huddled in bags and kept on top of one shelf or the other.
I am not saying this in a fit of complacence. For me the choice was simple. I thought the answer to my problems would come from doing well academically. I not only did well academically, I more like swept the works. But it didn't work for me. I don't know if it would have been better if I had known it then. Or if given the chance I would have been a maverick, or a typical conventee as students in Cuttack have to say, a well dressed girl with a raucous English who is a flapper, meaning little. Studies were never difficult. I enjoyed them. I was never systematic. I had read the whole of Morrison and Boyd Organic Chemistry and Resnick and Halliday Physics. I wanted to be in Medicine but I was scared of Biology and had a poor memory. I couldn't do Irodov because I did not do Mathematics after school. And i was one of the fastest in Mathematics at school. I was logical but not systematic. I was knowledgeous, but not smart. I had common sense, but not strategy. I was basically confused. And now while I am a doctor, I look up Computer Magazines on the net rather than look up articles in Medicine. That doesn't mean I don't like to be in Medicine. But I have a feeling I am not dedicated enough. My mind has a thousand ideas. I have seen some people and I know what dedication means when I have seen them toil endlessly to help those in need. I am not sure I fit the bill. I want to climb mountains and create a web site, know about MS Office and its tricks and nuances and hack sites that are password protected. True I want to serve people as an end result. But its not the sole thing on my mind. Its not the article on Lancet so much as it is hacking Lancet to get that article...Anyways leave it.....
So that is how my education went. Mostly on an Obsessive Compulsive basis. I gape when I hear my Co-PG enumerate scoring systems...I only understand things when I try them for myself, read them for myself, or see them for myself. I think this amount of disrespect is almost sacrilegeous in Medicine. But I cannot change it. i will only learn what I want to learn. Not what is asked of me to learn.
My days in School were as fast as I spoke the news headlines, always extempore..I used to be addicted to reading the paper 2 hours a day, a habit I have now shrugged compulsively to the point when my General Knowledge is abysmally low. My English teacher had said this, ' Sucharita comes, she speaks and she goes; and then we start listening what she has said'.
To the convent education in Cuttack, I am still glad I dod not go, I picked the best of the learning without accepting the whole package. The teachers I went to had me as one of their favorites amongst their ones from the Convent or Stewart. To this day, I would possibly still be counted as a student with one of the best English thats for anyone to boast. I did not lisp other people's lines nor quoted text. I spoke my own mind. Still do. My Prof Liked my English the day I entered his room. Maybe it had to do with the Hans Christian Anderson my mom bought for me instead of teddies and bunnies and comics when I was 4. I am more like the first generation robots in I, Robot. We will stand in line no matter how free we are. I will always watch movies alone, prefer a novel to a party and be as unsocial as a anemone. Its merely the instinct. There is nothing great about it. A lot of it came from my mother's effort to educate me precociously, from my brother's tremendous education in all things out of the ordinary...and for my idea that things will become okay if I am okay. And my education in SCB was deliberate, I was one of the top entrants to Stewart that year. But some one put a notion in my doctor parents' head that kids in Stewart did drugs....And I remember the reaction of my friends from Stewart when I told them this.
My interest in English arose out of a fascination for the wealth of knowledge it gave me. Both of us sisters were voracious readers. We never had teddies, or video games, or comics. We read Shakespeare, Dickens, Forsyth and more and more...
English is not a language, its not even an issue. It just happens to be the medium I will use to communicate in, if I meet a person from America. If people talked in binaries, I would love to go 10001101100011001....
let me show you an example of what good English is all about....
Needless to say, its from a guy from Stewart school...
http://imzeitgeist.blogspot.com/2006/11/that-name-on-merit-list.html
Its perhaps the idea that people get when they say I have a good command over the language. G used to say he liked my vomity style of writing when I wrote the good old Appendixedmusings. Well I have a few things on my mind right now about that. But honestly I don't know.
I think I have an okay English. People have said the language you can master is the language you dream in. Well in the days when I used to dream extensively, in monochrome and polychrome, it was always English. I was never very good at expressing in Oriya, chiefly because I did not read that much Oriya. And I read quite a bit of English, still do, thanks to my sister who got all the books and gave it to me for reading. I used to live with my sister and grandmother. Our parents were mostly posted at different places which meant we basically looked out for each other. And by the amount of liberty this gave to two young women in that age it meant that when we went shopping we purchased Robert Ludlums and Fredrick Forsyths by the dozens, she often spending her entire pocket money of 6 months on them. We never bought Mills and Boons, and maybe just one or two Harold Robbins....My parents were worried what we did with so much books. But they could not do more than grumble a bit ( And certainly not be able to read any of them, the reason for which I understand now since I have taken Medicine)
It all began on a winter day in Cuttack.I never had a proper Red sweater for my uniform. The first one a bit 'Light Red'; the second was a bit ' Dark Red', and since Cuttack winters are a monthly affair where sweaters are worn for a month to be hastily cleaned and put in the cupboard, 3 sweaters worn for 8 months covered 8 years with remarkable efficiency.
So when my Principal called this girl from 4th standard to come and tell her experience about her trip to Delhi to collect a National Talent Scholarship, I was only worried the small hole in my sweater at the back of my elbow would not show itself to anyone. I spoke something or the other, what came to my mind, and after I spoke I saw her approach me her eyes glistening against that morning sun on my face. She picked me up to follow to the dias my heart thumping and praying she should not do anything stupid to my hand like shake it or something.
" Now I am happy that when my kids go to receive awards, they don't have any difference from the students of Convent or Stewart...At least they donot speak in broken English..." And up went my hand firmly held by her, half my body lifted off along with it, as she lifted mine like refrees do to a boxer who wins the game. Amidst the resounding claps, my heart thudded with shame. I did not behave properly with anyone at home those few days. The sweater was changed within the next week as I refused to go to school wearing it.
True, I was taught by tutors with a English background. My first English teacher was from Stewart School, the stalwart of all schools in Cuttack, the Big Brother school. I went to his huge study lined with about a few hundred dictionaries and thesaurus and the " Compact Oxford Dictionary of English Language", a one feet by half and 15 inches tall book. I sat edgily on his swivel chair. 'What is the meaning of Vocabulary?'
'Its Word Power, Sir'
'Very Good'
This followed a few more questions in English I could have answered 2 years back.
He took me in.
By then I had finished Gone With the Wind. He did not know that until much later when he asked me to comment on a line of poem.
My school was SCB Medical Public School. A small school in a compromised plot of land granted by the College authorities of the big one, SCB Medical College. It was built entirely out of a wish of the College Staff chiefly to have their kids read in a school that would be easy for them to pick up. Notable only for the admission test, which was the toughest in the city, a nice staff ( most of whom had left by the time I had grown enough for them), and best, the type of students every school would want ( like an entire class 90 percent of whose students played GK in a free period without being asked to...that was mine..the 98 batch). 70 percent of the students belonged to some Hospital worker, from the HOD Medicine to the Sweeper. Needless to say, it bagged more Limca Quizzes, Bournvita Quizzes and Debates than any other. I went into the latter, then I also had a voice. But I never proved good at Debates which had judges who looked for content. I always wrote my debates after the first two or three which my father helped me with. I mainly won where the judges perhaps looked for spontaneity. I mostly spoke extempore. And I did well in Science quizzes. Immaterial stuff but by 8th standard I was dreaming of using the prize cups as glasses, and even flower vases. And the number collected by me and my sister grew so much that they were huddled in bags and kept on top of one shelf or the other.
I am not saying this in a fit of complacence. For me the choice was simple. I thought the answer to my problems would come from doing well academically. I not only did well academically, I more like swept the works. But it didn't work for me. I don't know if it would have been better if I had known it then. Or if given the chance I would have been a maverick, or a typical conventee as students in Cuttack have to say, a well dressed girl with a raucous English who is a flapper, meaning little. Studies were never difficult. I enjoyed them. I was never systematic. I had read the whole of Morrison and Boyd Organic Chemistry and Resnick and Halliday Physics. I wanted to be in Medicine but I was scared of Biology and had a poor memory. I couldn't do Irodov because I did not do Mathematics after school. And i was one of the fastest in Mathematics at school. I was logical but not systematic. I was knowledgeous, but not smart. I had common sense, but not strategy. I was basically confused. And now while I am a doctor, I look up Computer Magazines on the net rather than look up articles in Medicine. That doesn't mean I don't like to be in Medicine. But I have a feeling I am not dedicated enough. My mind has a thousand ideas. I have seen some people and I know what dedication means when I have seen them toil endlessly to help those in need. I am not sure I fit the bill. I want to climb mountains and create a web site, know about MS Office and its tricks and nuances and hack sites that are password protected. True I want to serve people as an end result. But its not the sole thing on my mind. Its not the article on Lancet so much as it is hacking Lancet to get that article...Anyways leave it.....
So that is how my education went. Mostly on an Obsessive Compulsive basis. I gape when I hear my Co-PG enumerate scoring systems...I only understand things when I try them for myself, read them for myself, or see them for myself. I think this amount of disrespect is almost sacrilegeous in Medicine. But I cannot change it. i will only learn what I want to learn. Not what is asked of me to learn.
My days in School were as fast as I spoke the news headlines, always extempore..I used to be addicted to reading the paper 2 hours a day, a habit I have now shrugged compulsively to the point when my General Knowledge is abysmally low. My English teacher had said this, ' Sucharita comes, she speaks and she goes; and then we start listening what she has said'.
To the convent education in Cuttack, I am still glad I dod not go, I picked the best of the learning without accepting the whole package. The teachers I went to had me as one of their favorites amongst their ones from the Convent or Stewart. To this day, I would possibly still be counted as a student with one of the best English thats for anyone to boast. I did not lisp other people's lines nor quoted text. I spoke my own mind. Still do. My Prof Liked my English the day I entered his room. Maybe it had to do with the Hans Christian Anderson my mom bought for me instead of teddies and bunnies and comics when I was 4. I am more like the first generation robots in I, Robot. We will stand in line no matter how free we are. I will always watch movies alone, prefer a novel to a party and be as unsocial as a anemone. Its merely the instinct. There is nothing great about it. A lot of it came from my mother's effort to educate me precociously, from my brother's tremendous education in all things out of the ordinary...and for my idea that things will become okay if I am okay. And my education in SCB was deliberate, I was one of the top entrants to Stewart that year. But some one put a notion in my doctor parents' head that kids in Stewart did drugs....And I remember the reaction of my friends from Stewart when I told them this.
My interest in English arose out of a fascination for the wealth of knowledge it gave me. Both of us sisters were voracious readers. We never had teddies, or video games, or comics. We read Shakespeare, Dickens, Forsyth and more and more...
English is not a language, its not even an issue. It just happens to be the medium I will use to communicate in, if I meet a person from America. If people talked in binaries, I would love to go 10001101100011001....
let me show you an example of what good English is all about....
Needless to say, its from a guy from Stewart school...
http://imzeitgeist.blogspot.com/2006/11/that-name-on-merit-list.html
Thursday, May 13, 2010
It had to happen
After years of being hounded by friends to put up some sort of a picture in remembrance/recognition to my identity, and after years of soliciting one corner of the world to another to speak my heart out because I am never able to speak it up in company or physical presence of other people, I finally came up with a picture that looked relatively like my non obese Cuttack days and I decided to put it up on Blogger and Orkut. Orkut I changed to the Autumnal fall tree I took a snap of in April, Blogger I forgot to edit because my torrent client running on my desperate 256Mb RAM laptop cannot open and I did not get one opportunity to write for the last one month.
And my rather hypocritical attempts to stay anonymous ( why I use the word hypocritical will justify itself later) met with an inevitable failure because somehow the word leaked and a most esteemed Professor, who I look up to the same reverence as I look upto my own, was tipped off about it and spoof......
You would possibly think the first disclaimer to be the line I wrote last, " the sugar coated truth"
Its not like that. If it would be someone other than my own Professor ( Who instantly recognizes something is amiss, if I am not being chirpy, or angry, or impulsive, or stupid), Professor D, Dr S ( and its not my Final Year for chrissake, as I mistakenly informed Prof D, its the Radiology Asso Professor I have the very good fortune of being very close with, because we manage to talk without pretences), or Dr P ( My Senior Resident), I would just have taken an alias and taken this off blogger and put it on Wordpress or something else on here for that matter. I am too computer proficient for most people to catch me with a faux pas. And like I said, I am honest and forthright to a fault. And its to an extent when it doesn't become a virtue but becomes foolish. I don't reveal my plans in public, I don't talk silly, I don't communicate, I am very unsocial, and people, both family, colleagues, my teachers and some of my closest friends have had a tough time thinking what went wrong because I did not speak at a social gathering ( including the last farewell dinner to our final years), the truth is, I cannot. And for that matter its not because I am either conceiting because of a superiority complex or a sense of distinction. I cannot open up, usually. And thats the reason I take to blogging like a fish to water. For me, its the aphrodaisiac, its also the carminative.
I will continue to write here, with my name on it, and hopefully better pictures ( someone should always know what I mean by better pictures when I compare mine to my extremely pretty elder sister). My mistakes will be mine. My lessons for me to learn, and my confusion, if it will be sorted out, will be sorted out here.
I am pretty sure, with all due respect, that my Professors ( the 3 I have talked about, and I will never again mention my gratefulness for knowing them, because its almost bordering to sound artificial, even despite myself), who have known me will know what I am saying saying is the truth. Their blessings just make me more cautious that I live upto their expectations, and like what I see with my Professor ( who appeared in the clinic within 30 seconds of me seeing him out far through the window, at a pace easily five times mine :(, when will I ever match his strides? Thats why i purposefully walked behind him with the intern on our way back, and he is always gracious enough to slow down and look back waiting for us to catch up...I am hopeless, even strotting hasn't helped, his tendon injury did, but I prefer him walking at his own pace an me catching up with him someday rather than him getting injured and slowing down for me), that at anytime my physical inabilities should not be a cause of a lack of commission, or an omission thereof, and deny a needy the health to which he has a right to, once he/she comes under our care. That I did not do a good CPR ( I have never done a good CPR save three or four times. The patients were always too dead, too cold, and too irresuscitable). And my biggest of all woes...I cannot intubate. I cannot Intubate. 2 just happened by chance. 1 was saved, before collapsing again. I cannot even begin to talk about mental inabilities, because even now, I am too uneducated, too illiterate, to be able to be of any significance.
I have come back to Blogger earlier, not because my Proff D asking me to use 'ability which I have got' ( Wondering what would have happened if I would walk with Proff D...He would have given up on me...). I have come back to say today that I am happy. I wanted to be in Internal Medicine and I am glad to be here. I may not be the best people have had here, but I will give it my best. And I will hopefully live upto the expectations of some people who matter to me here. People I will end up mentioning here and there. I am only worried if I can prove to be as good, because it is tough, and although I have no fixed plans of where I am going to go in life, marriage, kids and the like, I know I will continue to be honest, to those who can see beyond the clumsiness ( like carrying My Professor's pendrive on my stapler and dropping it in front of him, or hammering a nail back to place in front of him after it tore a good bit of my trousers),and I will try to give my best, and also try to become more graceful as a woman. I am glad that people have accepted me here. And I am glad I am out of certain issues and certain doubts I had about myself and life.
And people who have seen me in the past and know what I am talking about will know why I am emphasizing this 5 letter word so much. HAPPY. Fortunately, the old appendixedmusings was burnt. It had too much of a 20 year old to 24 year old in it. Today, I am a proud physician serving the people of this land, to the best of my abilities. And will continue to do so while time permits.
And I have accepted them. Thats my religion. Thats all I am bothered about.
Amen.
And my rather hypocritical attempts to stay anonymous ( why I use the word hypocritical will justify itself later) met with an inevitable failure because somehow the word leaked and a most esteemed Professor, who I look up to the same reverence as I look upto my own, was tipped off about it and spoof......
You would possibly think the first disclaimer to be the line I wrote last, " the sugar coated truth"
Its not like that. If it would be someone other than my own Professor ( Who instantly recognizes something is amiss, if I am not being chirpy, or angry, or impulsive, or stupid), Professor D, Dr S ( and its not my Final Year for chrissake, as I mistakenly informed Prof D, its the Radiology Asso Professor I have the very good fortune of being very close with, because we manage to talk without pretences), or Dr P ( My Senior Resident), I would just have taken an alias and taken this off blogger and put it on Wordpress or something else on here for that matter. I am too computer proficient for most people to catch me with a faux pas. And like I said, I am honest and forthright to a fault. And its to an extent when it doesn't become a virtue but becomes foolish. I don't reveal my plans in public, I don't talk silly, I don't communicate, I am very unsocial, and people, both family, colleagues, my teachers and some of my closest friends have had a tough time thinking what went wrong because I did not speak at a social gathering ( including the last farewell dinner to our final years), the truth is, I cannot. And for that matter its not because I am either conceiting because of a superiority complex or a sense of distinction. I cannot open up, usually. And thats the reason I take to blogging like a fish to water. For me, its the aphrodaisiac, its also the carminative.
I will continue to write here, with my name on it, and hopefully better pictures ( someone should always know what I mean by better pictures when I compare mine to my extremely pretty elder sister). My mistakes will be mine. My lessons for me to learn, and my confusion, if it will be sorted out, will be sorted out here.
I am pretty sure, with all due respect, that my Professors ( the 3 I have talked about, and I will never again mention my gratefulness for knowing them, because its almost bordering to sound artificial, even despite myself), who have known me will know what I am saying saying is the truth. Their blessings just make me more cautious that I live upto their expectations, and like what I see with my Professor ( who appeared in the clinic within 30 seconds of me seeing him out far through the window, at a pace easily five times mine :(, when will I ever match his strides? Thats why i purposefully walked behind him with the intern on our way back, and he is always gracious enough to slow down and look back waiting for us to catch up...I am hopeless, even strotting hasn't helped, his tendon injury did, but I prefer him walking at his own pace an me catching up with him someday rather than him getting injured and slowing down for me), that at anytime my physical inabilities should not be a cause of a lack of commission, or an omission thereof, and deny a needy the health to which he has a right to, once he/she comes under our care. That I did not do a good CPR ( I have never done a good CPR save three or four times. The patients were always too dead, too cold, and too irresuscitable). And my biggest of all woes...I cannot intubate. I cannot Intubate. 2 just happened by chance. 1 was saved, before collapsing again. I cannot even begin to talk about mental inabilities, because even now, I am too uneducated, too illiterate, to be able to be of any significance.
I have come back to Blogger earlier, not because my Proff D asking me to use 'ability which I have got' ( Wondering what would have happened if I would walk with Proff D...He would have given up on me...). I have come back to say today that I am happy. I wanted to be in Internal Medicine and I am glad to be here. I may not be the best people have had here, but I will give it my best. And I will hopefully live upto the expectations of some people who matter to me here. People I will end up mentioning here and there. I am only worried if I can prove to be as good, because it is tough, and although I have no fixed plans of where I am going to go in life, marriage, kids and the like, I know I will continue to be honest, to those who can see beyond the clumsiness ( like carrying My Professor's pendrive on my stapler and dropping it in front of him, or hammering a nail back to place in front of him after it tore a good bit of my trousers),and I will try to give my best, and also try to become more graceful as a woman. I am glad that people have accepted me here. And I am glad I am out of certain issues and certain doubts I had about myself and life.
And people who have seen me in the past and know what I am talking about will know why I am emphasizing this 5 letter word so much. HAPPY. Fortunately, the old appendixedmusings was burnt. It had too much of a 20 year old to 24 year old in it. Today, I am a proud physician serving the people of this land, to the best of my abilities. And will continue to do so while time permits.
And I have accepted them. Thats my religion. Thats all I am bothered about.
Amen.
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