And let's go back in time, again :)
Wooooooosh........
Here comes February 11, 2013.
I had been in home for a week or so. The anxious me was checking the university website for the results regularly. I wasn't sure what was going to happen to me, all the cases, PVD (Surgery), Atrial Fibrillation (Medicine), DUB (Gynac) kept flashing in my mind. I was going through the vivas again in mind and trying to console myself that I had done the best that I could have. It was maybe somewhere in the evening that I got a message that results have been declared. I opened the website with a pounding heart. I still remember seeing the word PASSED with the pink background. I burst out crying. I wasn't sure of passing, there were so many things that had gone wrong in the past, the people who had been displeased of the fact that an outsider can be good, there have been a lot of things that happened.
All that is a thing for some other time. This is not the right time for me to speak out. Maybe few years later.
I remember being relieved. My mother had been equally relieved. I had decided that I will end everything if anything goes wrong this time around. She was just relieved to have me alive, I guess. We had gone to a restaurant that night, there was the first time that I even looked at my marks. It was something around 69.6%. I was just thankful to God and didn't think beyond that. I was content with just passing.
And then came the phase of taking a transfer. Ummm...Since MBBS is composed of 4.5 years of study and a year of internship, in certain cases after completing the study, people opt for other hospitals to do their internship, mainly in search of a conducive environment for studies, to prepare for PG exams, etc.
I had also thought of going back home for my internship, I needed to be somewhere close to home, so I can gain back the things that I lost in these 4.5 years.
For a transfer we needed NOC from our parent college and the place where we are taking a transfer to. To get NOC, there was an interview scheduled for all interested people. I also applied and arranged for a sum of 1 lac rupees, to be paid as a transfer charge. There were about twenty people who had applied. Generally, whoever applies for a transfer, gets it. So, I was hopeful of going home in a few days. But as it turns out, I wasn't granted the transfer. 19 people had got it and I was the only one, who didn't. I remember sitting in the garden of my college and thinking, what will happen now, how will I cope up, how will I study and get a PG seat or prepare for other exams.
Nothing could have been done, so I had to start here. And so it began...
8th March, 2013: The first day of my internship. I was posted in ENT for 15 days. I remember going to the wards and asking where to report for the duty, since I was alone in the unit, I didn't know where to go. A PG helped me, she told me to go a prof in the OPD. I went there along with my reporting letter. He made me write that letter three times after throwing it on my face the first time (This is the reason, if anyone tells me to write a letter now I go really formal and write a proper novel kind of a thing). Anyways, it started, I started sitting in the OPDs, prescribing drugs, examining patients and stuff. Then came the OT day, I was given a chance to close a surgery (suturing a parotid abscess case in my first posting only, people generally never get a chance throughout the whole year but I got in my first posting). Even though I wasn't really excited about it all, but I went ahead with it. Somehow surgeries have never excited me, I have been a part of difficult and long surgeries but never even once did I like it.
Coming to the next posting, Ophthalmology, again for 15 days. It was a light posting where even though we used to work throughout but there being two other people from my batch, the work used to get divided. I remember telling people to close there and read the Snellen chart (Used to be be almost 50-60 pt/day/intern). Assisted in Phaco and such surgeries. With all the night duties looming large, I had to shift nearer to the hospital. It was the time when I shifted from my college room to a place near the hospital (Since the hospital and the college are almost 7-8 km apart). It was very small place but something that I thought was okay to crash down since there was not going to be any holidays throughout the year, not even Sundays. We were "entitled" to one CL a month, that too depended on the HOD and was a rarity. Anyways, somehow another 15 days went by.
And then came Casualty, something that changed my perspective about medicine completely. It made me realise, this is not the place to be, for me. If you can't dissociate your emotions from people, you are not supposed to be a doctor.
In Casualty posting, the duties are generally divided into, 8-2pm, 2-8pm, 8pm-8am. I was posted for the night duties, i.e. 8pm-8am for the first five-six days. I learnt a lot during that time. I had to act as triage person and evaluate patients when they came to the emergency department and take in patients only if they had a chance of surviving or if there are any beds available. I used to be horrified throughout the night, people used to just barge in and demand their relatives to be treated or brought back to life. I being just an intern could only give CPR or try my best to refer them to the Post-graduates. Once, I remember, I had taken in a patient with haematemesis, thinking that there are ventilator/ICU beds available and we can do something to save the guy. But it was not the case, the man died in the hospital. And a post-graduate just kept yelling at me because of his frustration that he died because of you and now I have to fill up his death form. I still remember those words, this man died because of you, you are responsible for his death. It was not my fault. He was in a critical condition. The medicine PG just took out his frustration on me. I remember going to a secluded place in the hospital and breaking down there completely at one in the night. It disillusioned me completely from the whole "doctor" thing. I was pretty sure by now that this is not how it should be. This is not something that I can take, I had tried my best to save that person, if he died, I should not have been blamed for his death just because I did the mistake of trying to save him, to get him in the hospital. I learnt a lesson, lesson being nobody gives a fuck about a life.
The days passed and I saw a lot, I had hid myself from angry patient relatives who had come to hit me because they thought their relative was serious but to me, she seemed normal. There was no watchman or nurses who would have come to save me, they would have all enjoyed the show, I had to run and lock myself in a empty room to save myself from getting beaten up. I saw many deaths, suicides, RTAs. It all made me realise what it takes to become a doctor.
I will remember those 15 days, all my life. Those days are one of the reasons, why I don't want to become a clinician. I don't think I can take people dying and laugh about it an hour later, as if nothing has happened, I don't think I am someone who will just send off somebody to other hospital just because there are high chances that one can die in the premises of "my" hospital.
But there were many things yet to learn....
After Casualty, started dermatology, again for 15 days, by this time, I had become a favourite among the PGs, they knew that I would do the work, so they used to tell me to do their work and I being a naive asshole did too. In dermatology, I saw TEN cases, I used to dress a person twice a day who had extensive lesions throughout their bodies. It was an okay posting, which went without troubles and I needed that time to compose myself before I started Surgery.
8, May-8 July, 2013: I was posted in Surgery Unit III. We had to do dressing of Post-op patients (patients used to stay for a month or two because of non-healing ulcers), do the usual follow up, prescribe drugs, evaluate patients for OT postings, suture removals etc. In this unit, we were supposed to prescribe only the drugs with whose company the professor had a tie-up with. He used to thrash anybody, who used to prescribe any other drug other than those. It is just the tip of the iceberg. These kind of things happen everywhere. Again, something that I didn't approve of.
Anyways, this was the posting in which I assisted in many surgeries, from just 30 min ones to even 7-8 hr ones. I remember holding the intestines of one patient in my hand and standing while it underwent slow movements of peristalsis in my hand and then keeping my hand inside the body cavity to push the liver to one side, so that the consultant can get a better view of the aorta. It was a massive 7 hour surgery. And I was the only intern assisting. In those two months, I got enough options to suture and assist in surgeries. Woosh, still I didn't like the whole procedure of changing clothes, washing hands with soap, betadine, changing into into gowns and then assisting in surgeries. I used to hate the whole process and just want to run away.
This was the posting where I was called a rapist, just because I didn't take permission before taking BP of a patient's relative because I was asked to. I remember, the Wednesday afternoon, when a Professor just said that "where you come from, the only thing that your parents taught is to do whatever you want. You are someone who is a rapist." This I will never forget in my life. It kind of made me realise that I am not welcome here, whatever I do, I will always be a third class person here, just because I was born in such a place.
To this date, I don't know where I belong...
P.S.- Sorry for an abrupt end. Gotta go. Got other work to do. Will write about the remaining eight months sometime later. :)
 |
| Life: A never-ending quest |
