ITS A DOCS LIFE

The stars shine down upon these angels on earth,
God created them to counter humanity's dearth,
But are they not humans too,
Then why are they expected to act unlike the other mortals do..
Some doctors will say that the c in the title should be changed to g.I have been a medical student for two years now.I have seen such gore that the most gross scene in any movie pales in front of it.Those chopped off limbs and all cant even capture a fraction of the real gore. Please dont read after taking your lunch. One example is -Some of my batchmates saw a doctor sawing off a diabetic patients dead foot with the patient calmly watching on .No anaesthesia .None needed.For the foot was dead .There is a ward with many diabetic patients; being from extremely poor backgrounds they didnt come for management earlier so now have lost one to all of their limbs.There are the cancer patients and unlike what laymen think its not so rare.They look like people eaten up by an insiduous parasite.Then comes the children.You see angels wracked with the most hideous ailments ever.You begin to wonder whether god really exists .For if he does how can he let those poor innocents suffer.Ulcers.For laymen a apparently common harmless occurrence.Reality -as if an invisible hand has taken a scoop out of the very bodies of the patients .We saw a patient with an ulcer having eaten away the muscles and skin of his forearm baring bones.His screams were heart rending with the pain killers too until sedatives kicked in.BURN S patients.We see them in various degrees of decomposition.In severe burns if we see their beds empty the next day we know better than to ask .Death simply seems to prowl the corridors.Once at night time on a stormy day one of my friends got hurt.We took him to the emergency services.We saw a patient struck by lightning .Burnt and convulsing.Talking about emergency services during my visits there i have seen patients so knocked up that their bones showed through in several places.Lying in the puddle of their own vital fluids their glazed eyes bore into ones soul.
We see oozing masses protruding from patients private regions.We do some examinations in which blood spurts out at a single touch.We see operations where humans are forced to act like sophisticated butchers to cure fellow humans and prolong their life spans.The blood,the sounds of the suction equipment,some weird looking procedures(like a doc hammering away with a chisel on a patients jaw ) ;all sorts of things.Some students nearly faint in the op theatres.Then comes the practise part.In the third year we start practising some minor things on patients moving on from dummy exercises to the real thing.Then there is the dread of labour room postings.Unlike the ever smiling docs from the movies we consider it to be the most challenging and tough assignment of our entire course.You know the joy of holding someone s bundle of joy pales in comparison to 18 hour workday.Standing on your own two feet for 18 hours a day for two consecutive weeks (no weekend breaks)is not an attractive prospect.The risk of AIDS and HIV hanging like the sword of damacles over your head.Why?Because despite every protection one mistake and you can get a lethal disease while helping others bring someone to life.There s irony for you.
If by now you think that i am a queasy and lazy bum who hates this profession for these reasons alone i wont blame you.But hold your horses a bit.Here comes the part i really hate.Something changes deep inside you.You tend to become an automaton to keep your sanity intact.Emotions tend to receed.You become less spontaneous.More mechanised.Some say it gets you respect and gratitude from your patients and the public in general.But the respect is equivalent in duration to the treatment and if the therapy despite the doctor s best efforts does not somehow succeed ,then look out for those brickbats.I am no demi god like those smiling docs who retain their humanity and take the brickbats and the gratitude in their stride .Who keep on striving to bring back vigour to many more lives.To extend the lifespans of their fellow beings.I salute all doctors-my heroes and truly great mortals.Acknowledge them if you will....