Then give to the world the best you have and the best will come back to you .
– Madeline Bridges
It was the early hour of a sultry and stifling day. I had just finished my night rounds and was on my way back to my hostel. One patient in the ward was particularly sick and I was concerned about him. I had just explained to him he needed surgery to make a hole in his neck, a tracheostomy. He would lose his voice. He wanted to call all of his relatives and talk to them before his speech became a memory. I stood there empathetically.
Yes, I am a doctor, way down the hierarchy, in fact. A post-graduate resident in the department of ENT.
On my way back from the ward, as I was enjoying the light drizzle, my bleep rang. It was a familiar sound on the other side, which told me I had a patient in casualty. I was on emergency room duty that night.
I quickly reached there to find a 40-odd year old in distress. She had a fish bone stuck in the throat. Well, why would anybody eat fish so late in the night, I thought to myself. Apparently sensing that thought, she said: ‘Madam, we have so much faith in this hospital, we travelled all the way here’.
Whoa! Now that was too much of responsibility on me. With instructions to shift the patient to the procedure room, I checked my watch. It was 2.30 a.m. I went into the procedure room and we managed to remove the fish bone. Then came another call. This time it was a child with ear pain: infection of the middle ear. Then there was a man with high BP and bleeding from the nose; the nose needed to be packed. Many ears, noses and throats later, I checked my watch. It was casualty duty handover time. Phew!
Walking back to my room, I allowed the fresh scent of morning tea brewing and the chirping of birds to sink into me. I had an hour to get myself back to my professional self and hurry to the OPD.
I had just managed to eat a morsel of my breakfast when the phone rang: “Where are you? We have a tracheostomy in the ward. Come...” Well, life goes on.
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