Life Inc. - part II

Exposure to such realities is bound to change a person. For me who has been unexposed to the Med School life, health is taken for granted. I’ve lost count of the times, that I’ve disregarded health in pursuit of my goals. Be it exams, college festival preparations, stage play organization, job and so on. Even now, if I tell someone that ‘be thankful for the health you’ve got’, I would be scoffed at.

Commonly, we do not think of our health as our asset, but instead take it for granted and continue to crave for our goals, and aspirations. But my friend held a different view altogether. I guess, seeing people fighting for their lives every single day, fighting disease and battling death for every single moment, seeing patients crying in pain or their loved ones holding prayer beads at night makes you rethink your views.

You begin to realize that your physical and mental health is in fact, your biggest asset. You thank the Almighty for simple things like the air in your lungs and the blood in your heart. A realization dawns slowly but surely that many in this world are unfortunate enough to not even have those very basic things like a healthy mind and body to live with. As you see people borrowing and craving for money just so that they can pay for medicine to cure their beloved, or to get a bed for their loved ones, you learn that poverty, illiteracy and population combined together are even worse than a hydrogen bomb. And under such circumstances, the doctors toil and adapt to harsh realities of the situation.

And even then, even when you have put in hour after painful hour of your relentless toil for a patient, is there a guarantee that you are doing what is “right”? What if you just spent 4 hours of Herculean efforts in saving a man’s life, and then his own wife and family or acquaintances walk up to you and say “Why did you save this horrible drunkard? He does it every time. He gets better, starts drinking again, steals every penny from his wife and family, gets drunk, beats his wife and robs his children of every single happy memory till he winds up in hospital where again, his wife has to somehow pay the bills. It would have been better if he had died.”

Then when you look up to the sky in utter frustration, you realize, that there was this other patient who also needed your time and attention, and who was in fact, a good person, but whom you could not help, because you were trying your best to help a man live who is going to make everyone’s life miserable, the moment he walks out of here. How does the oath you took make your conscience feel then?

As a doctor living in a country with a colossal population, you are faced with such patients every minute. You have 400 patients entering your hospital, whom you have to face with your team of doctors. Within half a minute, you have to quickly diagnose their illness from their primary symptoms, and then direct them towards the correct departments and doctors. Your diagnosis is hindered by the fact that many of these people are illiterate and do not know how to explain and tell their actual illness quickly. So what is going to happen if your prognosis is incorrect? Many of them are going to spend precious hours bouncing between departments and doctors trying to get to their correct specialist. How does one justify this lost time? On the other hand, if doctors start taking several minutes to correctly diagnose each patient, who will look after the deluge of patients coming in?

Real life throws such things at you. Questions you don’t want to answer, dilemmas you have no idea how to handle, moral conundrums you never thought you would be faced with. What we choose to do at such times can affect more than one life. As they say, “What we do, echoes in eternity.”

Under such pressure and trauma, our doctors are truly doing the impossible. They are making choices and fighting situations beyond the scope of others like me. They are showing that God truly does not play dice with the world.

Here’s doffing my hat, to mankind’s most noble profession.