The C-Section

Scrubbed in for the first time.
I was sweating like a pig.
Everything looked too clean,
a forest of humans clad in green.

Tips of fingers to top of elbow,
under nails, and back again.
Washed in Iodine for ten minutes,
touched the tap, had to do it again.

Got blood on my feet and OT chappals.
Watched the incision in horror and awe.
Put my hand in another's abdomen.
Helped pull the rectus apart.

Found out my glove size is 6.5
and the size of my brain minuscule.
I smelt blood. Suctioned it.
Got up to my wrists in it.

I saw life emerge, like a little rag doll.
Saw a baby pulled out,
pulled out with (force)ps.
And heard it make the most awesome sound.

Clamped the cord. And cut it.
Felt giddy as I did my first suture.
Felt nauseous. Had to step out.
Came back. Had to sit down.

Found a person to look up to.
Found a peace to hold on to.
Felt excitement like never before.
Confirmation of purpose and the promise of more.

More to learn. More to feel.
More of his glory will be revealed.
More to hear. \
Try to get over all fear.

So much to know...
Oh there is so much!
Felt inadequate. Small.
Humbled. In awe.

In awe of creation.
In awe of anesthesia.
In awe of absorb-able sutures,
and of negative airway pressure.

In awe of the fact that, yet,
anything can go wrong.
Or, that everything will go just fine,
as has been since Adam's day.

Pre Exam Epiphanies.

Stop. I've decided I need to Stop, Look, and Listen.  It's like all the visual and auditory stimulus I receive is shelved by my mind, blissfully ignored, in much the same manner as the sound of clashing cymbals on a deaf persons ears. Except the deaf person doesn't have a choice and he doesn't consider it blissful. I have the choice; not just to see and forget, but to understand and process, you know? So I did. A little.

Inconsequential things, like why would people on a platform move closer to the train they're meant to catch ,when they know its going to come and stop right in front of them anyway. Why would you deny a beggar money, just because they're not blind or as conventionally unable , yet stuff a 10 rupee, 500 calorie pack of Lays down your throat, a momentary high for your taste buds, which is probably taking you and him closer to your deaths.

Pre-Exam Epiphanies. I'm quite sure there'll be more.

I Study in Med School

What I’m writing about is no different from what most of us have probably realized at some point or the other while having stayed here, in a Medical College. It is not a new, sudden or remarkable realization, different from anything that has ever been thought. Here, is a leaf out of an non-descript medical students life, 9 days after joining and almost 2 years after having joined. 

9^th August 2011: A Bone in the Common Room                         Written by, The NAÏVE First Year

My hostel room consists of a few oddities, a bag of bones, scalpels, forceps, and surgical gloves, all of which I am very proud. As of now the bag of bones is sitting next to me on my bed. I am alone in my room, my roommate is out for dinner, yet the bag of bones is now sitting next to me on my bed. The remains of another human being, are sitting next to me. A human, a person, maybe a father, mother, sister, friend, flesh and bone, ligament, tendon, fascia and periosteum, vascular supply and nerve fibres, once upon a time innervated and gave life to these set of bones. Yet here they are in the hands of a first year medical student, as tools of learning, all 17 of them; fibula, tibia, femur, vertebrae, radius, ulna, humerus etc. I got them on loan for Rs 700. The remaining legacy of a person(s) who once lived, who was conceived and born, who lived and grew, who spoke a language, who had beliefs, for Rs 700.

I received my ‘bones’ in the Dissection Hall today. It’s a long white tiled hall, with metal stretchers arranged across its length. The tube lights are a bit too bright, like you’ve walked into an incandescent, florescent world. There are skeletons hanging in each corner, like morbid watch guards. It’s funny, I thought it was morbid the first day, but that’s also the only thing that’ll be left of me once I’m dead and gone. Maybe I will end up being an unclaimed body which ends up hanging on one of those hinges. Life is so transient. Life, a word I have come to reconsider in the last 2 weeks. A cement washbasin lines the wall, the dull grayish hue of the mosaic pattern, giving it a primal bare aura. Add to the whiteness of the room, our newly bought, well ironed, and spotless lab coats and you realize with a jolt to the gut that you’re in Medical College. Mind you, it’s been way different from what I thought it would be, like discovering the little asterix saying ‘conditions apply’ on a clearance sale poster. And that brings me back to the very ‘odd topic of this discourse, the bone in the common room.

Yesterday I was making maggi with my friend in the common room. It’s this room with a hot plate and a wash basin. Oh, and it has a dustbin. Pretty much. While cooking the maggi I started shuffling the stuff on the counter around, uncooked dal, long expired black pepper powder, used greasy pans and dismal looking rags, I was thinking about how people could be that dirty when I saw it. The bone. The scapula. In the common room. On a basin. Probably long forgotten by a medical student very much like me. Maybe I shouldn’t think it unusual to find a scapula just lying around the place, but I did. And I’m writing this down because when I’m a year into this course and I forget the awe that overtook me every time I thought about where I am and what I’m responsible to accomplish, I would read this.

24^th February 2013: The Babaji                                      Written by, the still NAÏVE Third Year

Talk about getting demoralized. If ever someone needs a check on their bloated egos, they don’t need to go any further than, Clinics. And I mean this not only for the poor student, but also for that ‘patient’ patient (pun intended) whose dignity and pride is slowly bartered off to all of us aspiring ‘doctors’ willing to percuss and prod him. I wonder where all those lofty ideals of ‘treating the patient as though they were your loved ones’ went.

I think my version of today is so very vastly different from what it’s supposed to be. Today I met a babaji, Ajaib Singh in Ward 2. He was a man slight in demeanor, with jolly twinkly eyes and laugh wrinkles on the edges of his eyes, like crinkled up butter paper. He had on an orange turban, a clean crisp off-white kurta and sheet pulled up to his waist. As I approached him I noticed under his bed a series of urine sample bottles and by his side was sitting his wife, knitting and chatting away with great agility at express speed. As I proceeded to get a ‘good’ history and find some of the ‘findings’ which always seem to elude me, he told me about how he’d been a shopkeeper till ‘peshap mein problem ho gaya’… his wife gave me an incessant backup of the details about how life changed after ‘peshap mein problem ho gaya’. I think I spent close to 40 minutes chatting with them completely forgetting to go and present my case, and therein lay the problem. Needless to say, I stuttered and stammered through the whole ordeal once I did get back to class, and received mirth-filled looks from the rest of my class mates, for the show had begun.

Now if I’d done things the way I was supposed to have, my day would’ve consisted of having worked up a patient, Ajaib Singh, male, 60 years old from Ludhiana who was apparently well till 5 days ago when he came to OPD with complaints of frequent and painful urination. End of story- teacher happy, student happy and patient? Well, who really cares right?

Note: Although the incidents may seem unrelated, and well, not that big a deal, slowly, ever so slowly, our consciences are getting blunted out and shaped. At the end of the day, it’s still in each of our hands to decide what shape that’s going to be.