Wounded Healer

Dear Mumma and Papa I wanted to write you an email as you are worried about me and Ajeet and this big bad world of medicine. You feel so proud that your daughter is a paediatrician and son in law a surgeon, but why don’t they ever seem proud and happy with what they’ve achieved? For how long will they keep struggling ? I battle with the same questions ..   And you are right Mumma .. we really don’t give this profession the credibility it deserves ..but truth is I do value this profession and the opportunities it provides us with. What we’ve learnt and trained or is unique and something that affects people’s lives enormously. I may crib about my residency but I’ve saved so many lives or even made mistakes that might’ve taken some , but not had the time to give a thought  probably because of our busy schedule. If not saving lives, I’ve counselled many parents about chronic  conditions or something as simple as feeding .. and that makes a huge difference .....

I was unlucky enough to meet my adversary pretty early in my student life..  and this is the sorry story What shall we call him ? I used to call him “ The dementor “ ( He very nearly sucked the life out of me )or “He who must not be named” The latter was the wise thing to do  right cause it seemed he had ears everywhere ( aka Big Brother, not unlike George Orwell’s protagonist). Others called him Cobra or snake ,   Was pretty variable but you get the gist- an embodiment of insolence and absurdity So lets recount some of my encounters with The Dementor 1 st year : ( Sleepy after NICU duty and attending the Dementors lecture which tends to veer off in all directions – My senior next to me scribbles “ It’s the grandfather’s drama again” and passes it to me .. I look down at it n the corner of my lip curls upwards.. And the evil grandfather pounces on us- “What are you grinning about sheepishly, Madam ?” The earth starts trembling .. his jaw is quivering...

We’ll call her D .. she came to us with breathing difficulty. And when we admitted her to ICU we were puzzled with the way her urine bag filled in a jiffy.We later found out she had been eating salt hidden in her pocket and wetting her bed since the last two years. And she was putting on weight rapidly !.. Parents were alarmed at her habits and brought her to the doctor. A blood test showed she was hypothyroid. Child was started on thyroxine, they were reassured and sent back , and yet the child kept eating salt and drinking gallons of water, an then peeing it out at the same rate. It lead to embarrassment at school. Her mother looked at her in concern but did not know what more to do. And now her child was here, struggling to breath .. why was this happening ? Her beloved child was on multiple tubes. She was being poked for blood daily , they were taking pieces of tissue from her lungs and her bone marrow and her liver and  the parents listened numbly while she was tol...