Sutured Dreams

Recently I had advised a friend to visit a nearby Taluk Hospital. Apparently, the doctor there was not only not helpful but also gave a mouthful of colourful words to boot. This behavior is not uncommon in our profession and over the past few months, I feel that I can hardly consider myself to be an exception to this problem. I had decided early in my practice that I did not want to be one of those doctors who needlessly scolds patients. But simply having good intentions is not enough to prevent compassion fatigue from creeping in. It’s a cultural problem. Only a couple of days back I had someone ask me half-jokingly why I needed a day off when I don’t have any family at home (thanks for that). While this comment was tongue-in-cheek, it is more or less along the lines of how most people think. I never realized before how good it is to have an excuse to take a day off (the most acceptable being usually family or religious reasons). Things like trying to recharge your mind is viewed

Going back to work and meeting new people provides an opportunity to start anew. But as much as I like to pretend things are as normal as they used to be, there is still a voice in the back of my head telling me that too many bad things have happened for normalcy to resume.  I can function alright most of the time. No one will think anything is amiss. But once in a while, I let slip the vulnerability that lies beneath the surface. The pain I carry with me all the time. But I never show that side of me for too long. No one wants to see that. I prefer to write because it's a non-invasive way of getting these things off my chest that won't make anyone feel particularly uncomfortable.  During the past few months, I've had to deal with a mixture of palpitations, anxiety and loneliness. I guess it's just what happens when everyone you care about disappears from your life one by one and various nefarious elements swoop in to destroy your self-esteem.  I went to see a professio

 I was recently contacted by a family friend. She had a daughter who had just completed MBBS. She was enquiring if there was any way her daughter could get into government service without having to do Covid duty. Now, I had no idea if this is possible and so just referred them to appropriate authorities. But this incident does show the mentality of the common man towards government jobs in general. They want the money and the recognition but preferably without the hassle that comes with it. The problem though is that the medical profession comes with a lot of responsibility. A lot of lives depend on a single healthcare provider whether they like it or not.  The pandemic has revealed both heroes and cowards this year. The heroes being the ones tackling sick patients going into respiratory failure. This comes with horrible working hours in PPE suits, not to mention the stress and possible burnout that comes with working in uncertain times. The cowards are the ones kicking health workers

One of the new NEXT exam proposals seem to be that final year practical exam marks will now have the potential to decide a candidate's entire future. At a time when USMLE is trying to reduce the stress on students by making step 1 pass/fail only (so that mugging up useless crap like which viruses are double stranded won't affect your future), the powers that be closer to home seem to be attempting to make things unnecessarily stressful.  There is precious little merit in any practical exam. The only good thing about them is that it only matters if you pass or not. Some examiners will fail students based purely on personal issues. In some colleges, there are entire batches of students who passed after going to court to appeal their results. On the other side, many powerful parents also try to influence examiners just before such exams. As for me, I have good personal experience about how some examiners can go above and beyond their way in order to fail a student.  For one of my

Everybody judges. And unfortunately, most of them will do so with an insufficient understanding of why something is happening. I remember an incident from college that perfectly highlighted this point. We were in final year. It was early in the semester so a lot of people were actually interested in taking cases (an interest which would clearly diminish in a few months time). Problem was, none of us actually knew how to take cases back then. So it was usual practice to see case files to get an idea of what to do. We asked one of our seniors, who was a house surgeon there, for help but she promptly refused to show us the files. This infuriated some of my batchmates to the extent that they decided to complain to the HOD, who then granted the request to see the files. The feeling at the time was that this was some great victory for the juniors against the malevolent seniors. Flash forward a year or so and my thoughts on this incident completely changed. I was now house surgeon a

It only takes one tragedy (that everyone will likely forget about in 6 months time) to get everyone talking about mental health issues like never before. The good thing is that people are finally talking about things they normally don't want to deal with. But unfortunately it also kind of shows how little even seemingly very educated people know about such a common problem. One would have thought that in 2020, after several celebrities around the world have committed suicide and even in India where Deepika Padukone has opened up about dealing with depression, that educated people would be able to comprehend that depression and suicide ideation are not things that are exclusive to the poor. It's very easy to hide negative emotions in a society where very few people will be comfortable talking to a person expressing their pain. It was only as recently as last week that one of my classmates from school shared a meme which said something along the lines of "You don'

Recently, an acquaintance called me to ask for some advice after one of their elderly relatives fell ill. "Do you think she can survive?" "The prognosis is not very good at all," I replied. I then learnt that the doctors treating her felt the same way. Her family decided she should spend her last moments at home instead of the ICU. It was a personal decision and a completely understandable one. But I could tell that my acquaintance was not in a good place. I use the word acquaintance because I really didn't know this person very well, having had only a couple of conversations months back. But I still felt the urge to call and check up on him to see how he was doing. He wasn't good. But he was happy I called. Responding to pain Emotional pain is an extremely common problem. It's guaranteed that someone you're close to will go through it at some point in their lives. It's inevitable. Unfortunately, very very few know how to respond to

Names of certain individuals have been changed to hide their identity.  One of the frustrating aspects of life is that some pretty important lessons are only going to be properly understood when it's probably too late to use that wisdom effectively. We as human beings are inherently too ignorant of the consequences of our own actions  and those of others to properly protect ourselves from them. I suspect many of you reading this will not like what I have to say here in this post because it calls into question some of your own actions in the past (or because you genuinely think I'm an idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about), so don't say I didn't warn you. The reason why I write this is that I recently recalled a conversation I had with a friend, Tommy, many years ago and was a bit surprised that I have a completely different opinion about some of the things he said. A Random Conversation in College 5 years ago seems like an eternity to me. So ma

  Names of certain individuals have been changed to hide their identity. Example 1 "I want to marry someone who has never been in a relationship in her life," proclaimed Tommy. "Don't you have like 7 ex-girlfriends?" I asked. "Yeah, so?" "Nothing..." Example 2 "I don't like that girl (who I've never talked to) anymore," said Tommy. "Her dress showed too much upper arm. Hideous." "Dude, you do realise that you're wearing bright red pants while handing out fashion advice?" "Yeah, so?" "Nothing..." Example 3 "You should marry soon. A wife would take care of all of your problems at home." Yes, clearly expecting someone to give up all her dreams to sort my shit out seems reasonable. Example 4  "Bro, I need you to find a girl for me," said David. "Seriously?!" I asked, wondering if he'd mistaken me for someone else. &qu

The names of certain individuals have been changed to protect their identity One of the things that the Covid pandemic has shown throughout the world is that when push comes to shove, generalists are what the public needs. Specialists are great but the backbone of the health system comes from the generalists who do just enough of everything to prevent it all from falling apart. This was interestingly a prediction that one of the most inspirational teachers in my life, the late Dr KC Gopalakrishnan sir hammered into my skull back when I was in final year. Unfortunately the problem is that there is unfortunately no glamour in being a generalist. All young doctors prefer to be a specialist. The public prefers specialists. Family medicine doctors are not well trained. Emergency medicine is an underdeveloped field in Kerala. I do know outstanding GPs who are practicing good medicine but unfortunately you get the feeling that a lot of generalists feel underwhelmed by the trajectory thei

The names of certain individuals have been changed to hide their identity  " To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. "                              - Hamlet, William Shakespeare Lockdown has now reached 50 days. That's 50 days of mostly being stuck at home alone save for some brief interactions with neighbors and stepping out for essential shopping every couple of weeks. This is a perfect environment for old memories to start quietly creeping through the curtains of my mind. And most of them, unfortunately, are not very pleasant. Most of the tragedies in my life have been due to fate but some of them were caused by the malevolence of others combined by own naturally passive behavior. This was most apparent during the time when me and my bedridden father were unceremoniously kicked out of the