Life Inc. - part I
“Welcome to Life Inc. We here at Life Inc. process lives. At approximately 400 lives in 3 hours, we are the fastest in the industry today. From orthopedic to pulmonary disorders, our team of professionals cumulatively processes any ailment at the rate of about 2 lives a minute. You… are in safe hands.”
Does this sound like some advertisement in a science fiction movie? Or may be advertisement for some company in a fictional galaxy far, far away in a twisted world? Well, sadly, it is not. I just described a normal Monday at government hospital for you in today’s real world in a developing country reeling under population explosion. Today’s real world – more unbelievable than a science fiction novel, and more shocking than an imaginary horror story. As Morpheus says to Neo in The Matrix, “Welcome, to the real world.”
Now, I must comment here that not all Mondays are as described above and make no mistake; I’m not bad mouthing or condemning the hospitals in these places. On the contrary, by the time I conclude this article, I will have done just the opposite. But, I sincerely believe that it is time, that the harsh reality of this profession be brought to the people like me who only know these people by one generic term – ‘Doctor’, and who know little of what it takes to be one.
I’ve been in hospitals more than once for injury that required surgery. On each occasion I was in so much pain that I had little time to be worried about the doctors themselves and the pressures they deal with. For me, as an 8 year old kid who had his leg broken, these doctors were magicians who were just expected to heal me. What we forget though at such times, is that these guys are humans after all.
Just recently, I made friends with a doctor. We got talking one evening over dinner, about his experiences and hearing them one after the other, just shook me up. A whole new view of the world was brought in front of me – a view that totally defies textbook rules and generally accepted norms of life, and is yet truer, more real and more undeniable. Life after all, is not how it seems, there is more here than meets the eye.
As I spoke with him that evening, I realized that the process of becoming a doctor is not just a five year study of books, procedures and symptoms on how to save someone’s “life”, but also a process of understanding what “life” actually is, understanding the forces at work that are beyond a human being’s control and finally realizing how enormously difficult it gets at times to abide by the oath they take at the end of their course. He spoke that evening as a man worn by the cares of a person for whom death is just another occurrence in a day. But yet, he had the smiles and the good natured banter going. And I was thinking to myself, “a human mind can truly adapt to anything”. When a person trains to be a doctor, his way of looking at life and death completely undergoes a transformation. To see how this change happens, a simple thing to do is to see how the approach and outlook of these trainees towards a diseased body changes. What I heard from him about this, was both chilling and yet hugely educating in a way.
With a deep look in his eyes, he said, “On day 1 of the clinics, every patient for you is a “new case”, you are eager, it’s your first day in apron and stethoscope and you want to learn as much as you can. By the time you are halfway through with the training, every patient for you is a “life” which you are trying to save, and it’s a challenge to your knowledge. And by the end of your training, when you have gathered all knowledge that the place could give you, every patient for you is “just another patient”, and at times, you know that there is nothing you can do to save his life, and many a times, by the time your mind registers that the patient is dead, you are looking at the next patient in queue eagerly waiting for you to clear off this “body” from the bed so he can use the bed and get some medical help.
Rarely has any other single dialogue changed my view of life so much. There are scores of people on this planet who go through this metamorphosis every year. They perform this journey starting from a “case” to “just another patient” going through a “life” in the middle until a patient becomes a “body” which you do your best to cure and put in all your sincere effort, but if it fails, there is another waiting to take its place on the bed.
Somewhere along the way, you change. You change from being a student to someone who understands a little of this juggernaut they call life – because it too like a juggernaut, goes on, without stopping for anybody of anything.
Does this sound like some advertisement in a science fiction movie? Or may be advertisement for some company in a fictional galaxy far, far away in a twisted world? Well, sadly, it is not. I just described a normal Monday at government hospital for you in today’s real world in a developing country reeling under population explosion. Today’s real world – more unbelievable than a science fiction novel, and more shocking than an imaginary horror story. As Morpheus says to Neo in The Matrix, “Welcome, to the real world.”
Now, I must comment here that not all Mondays are as described above and make no mistake; I’m not bad mouthing or condemning the hospitals in these places. On the contrary, by the time I conclude this article, I will have done just the opposite. But, I sincerely believe that it is time, that the harsh reality of this profession be brought to the people like me who only know these people by one generic term – ‘Doctor’, and who know little of what it takes to be one.
I’ve been in hospitals more than once for injury that required surgery. On each occasion I was in so much pain that I had little time to be worried about the doctors themselves and the pressures they deal with. For me, as an 8 year old kid who had his leg broken, these doctors were magicians who were just expected to heal me. What we forget though at such times, is that these guys are humans after all.
Just recently, I made friends with a doctor. We got talking one evening over dinner, about his experiences and hearing them one after the other, just shook me up. A whole new view of the world was brought in front of me – a view that totally defies textbook rules and generally accepted norms of life, and is yet truer, more real and more undeniable. Life after all, is not how it seems, there is more here than meets the eye.
As I spoke with him that evening, I realized that the process of becoming a doctor is not just a five year study of books, procedures and symptoms on how to save someone’s “life”, but also a process of understanding what “life” actually is, understanding the forces at work that are beyond a human being’s control and finally realizing how enormously difficult it gets at times to abide by the oath they take at the end of their course. He spoke that evening as a man worn by the cares of a person for whom death is just another occurrence in a day. But yet, he had the smiles and the good natured banter going. And I was thinking to myself, “a human mind can truly adapt to anything”. When a person trains to be a doctor, his way of looking at life and death completely undergoes a transformation. To see how this change happens, a simple thing to do is to see how the approach and outlook of these trainees towards a diseased body changes. What I heard from him about this, was both chilling and yet hugely educating in a way.
With a deep look in his eyes, he said, “On day 1 of the clinics, every patient for you is a “new case”, you are eager, it’s your first day in apron and stethoscope and you want to learn as much as you can. By the time you are halfway through with the training, every patient for you is a “life” which you are trying to save, and it’s a challenge to your knowledge. And by the end of your training, when you have gathered all knowledge that the place could give you, every patient for you is “just another patient”, and at times, you know that there is nothing you can do to save his life, and many a times, by the time your mind registers that the patient is dead, you are looking at the next patient in queue eagerly waiting for you to clear off this “body” from the bed so he can use the bed and get some medical help.
Rarely has any other single dialogue changed my view of life so much. There are scores of people on this planet who go through this metamorphosis every year. They perform this journey starting from a “case” to “just another patient” going through a “life” in the middle until a patient becomes a “body” which you do your best to cure and put in all your sincere effort, but if it fails, there is another waiting to take its place on the bed.
Somewhere along the way, you change. You change from being a student to someone who understands a little of this juggernaut they call life – because it too like a juggernaut, goes on, without stopping for anybody of anything.
posted by Viraj Datar | 1:31 PM
1 Comments:
The blog's beauty is that an 'outsider' helps others understand the insider's view !
I simply loved the start - a masterpirce !!!
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