The Talk About Attendants

The Talk About Attendants

There are people in this world who ask stupid questions designed for cheap irritation. I have found that the frequency of encountering them is manifold more within the hospital than elsewhere. Also, at times the belligerence coming along with that botheration is remarkable in an unwelcome manner.

A few days ago, in the Emergency, one fellow demanded for a polythene cover for the X-rays done on his patient. My junior told him that such a thing was not available as the authorities did not provide it. To that, the person made a sore face and raised his voice in disbelief to ask, “Why?” The intern smiled and replied, “Because it is not a grocery shop”. That witty answer unfortunately was ill-received and was the final hit on his choleric disposition. His scowl challenged an impromptu glare on the intern’s face and he mouthed a few expletives while retreating. His vicious behaviour was simply unexplainable. He was not in any sort of emotional turmoil that could mitigate our disgust at his irascible theatrics. His friend, who suffered a few injuries and received prompt treatment, was an equally foul youth. The two of them landed in the Emergency after their 200 cc bike skidded into a drain after an ego-driven failed attempt at outpacing a car around a busy traffic corner. Both of the youths were half-a-decade younger than my intern. An aged ward boy came up to me and remarked that a few slaps on their faces have remained due for a long time in their lives!

          The point about pugnacity and spitefulness having been made, it is the turn to consider some cockamamie legends! “Where is the payment counter?” You tell them that it is in the ground floor and they will ask if it is located below! Likewise, if you tell them that something is in the third floor, they will ask you whether it is above the present level or below it when they know that they are in the second floor!  There was this one fellow who even after being explained that the third floor was above the second one, waited for some more explanation! He just raised his eyebrows as if he understood nothing and then hurled the next question, “Is it just above this or the topmost!”

There was another fellow attending to a diabetic post-operative patient who first asked, “Can my patient eat an apple?” I told “No!” because his patient had just come out from the operating room. The fellow nodded as if he understood well.  Then, he returned after ten minutes and asked, “Can he eat rasgullas!” I was peeved and horrified at the same time. I told him with real emphasis “No! He can’t eat anything because he will vomit it out”. The fellow nodded and took my word like a divine commandment. I thought that settled it. But, I was mistaken. He returned after another ten minutes, as if he were programmed to do so and asked “Can he eat a bedona?” This time I realized the futility of any logical talk. I told him to draw a bedona. He complied and drew something round. I was none the wiser about what that thing was but I made a grave face and told him “Definitely no! This may kill your patient. Very harmful stuff! Such a round thing!! Bedona is bad!!!” And then I murmured to myself, rubbing my chin and looking thoughtfully to the floor, so that he could hear me and understand bits and pieces of what I was saying while he was following me for, as usual, more explanation. “…reverse peristalsis…aspiration….pneumonitis…” and thus I slowly distanced myself from him. The fellow was scared. Only technical terms could have inspired such terror. Maybe his patient won’t get to eat bedonas for a lifetime!

The real problem is the expectation that the doctor must explain every silly thing to the silliest detail! And when everything is told, some of these people are still not satisfied! They pester you till you grow red with frustration.

I have tried to pry into their mindset for some time now. I don’t expect to be totally rational with my analysis. I do it out of compulsion, to vent my frustration!

I quantify my opinions about the people in question thus:

1.     Insatiable and misplaced curiosity

2.     Unceremonious and unsought bequeathal of all responsibilities

3.     Ever eagerness to escape at all opportunities

4.     Perennial suspicion

5.     Monumental expectations or possibly the absolute lack of it

6.     Constant scrutiny to detect any fault and malicious delight at any success in this objectionable operation

7.     Delirious reaction to petty complaints of their patients. As for example: “Doctor, my patient keeps scratching his whole body all the time” (The patient in question has been an in-patient for a month and he was never given a bath or even the more convenient wet body wiping by his crazy attendant, the problem being compounded by his own reluctance, for this whole period!!) Expect only scratching then? “…Doctor, my patient only sleeps during day hours and not at night time!!” (The patient in question is bed-ridden round the clock and dozes every alternate hour. Besides, the attendant himself is asleep at night!)

8.     Watching their patient like a disease-processing object, always looking for any tell-tale signs of any new disease that may originate any moment!

9.     Unexplainable disbelief about anything turning for better in so much so that they will repeatedly question and cross-check about it from doctor to doctor. They cling to this disbelief in the same manner as they expect their patient to cling to his or her disease!

10.            Never ending gossip with fellow attendants about disadvantages of hospital stay and Herculean efforts on their part to overcome them.

These are only ten among the many that could have been enlisted. However, I fail to judge whether I have unduly exaggerated or inordinately down-toned my conclusions.

The Escape

The Escape

             Pashu Chauhan came to the Emergency at the stroke of midnight on 3^rd December with agonizing pain in his abdomen. He had a huge swelling there because too much of alcohol had damaged his pancreas. A diagnosis of pancreatic pseudo-cyst was made and he was admitted into the surgical ward.

His craving for alcohol persisted and he would both behave crazy for the lust of it and from time to time, squeal in pain in his bed beside his perpetually suffering wife, struggling with her sobs. The lyrics of a song, “I will give you reasons to continue; while you lie writhing on the floor…I am demon alcohol” could be fancied in his eyes!

Two weeks later, he was part of the MBBS final practical examination. His was a condition with ‘nice findings’ and he was perhaps the most difficult among the many ‘long cases’. Students were required to correctly diagnose and answer intelligently to questions about his disease.

Chauhan had to endure the replays of rigmarole of examination by two students every day for five days, which included queries about his complaints, censuring interrogation about his drinking habits, seemingly senseless and embarrassing inquiries about his income, daily meals, the structure of his house and his cursed poverty. Those were followed by a head-to-toe scrutiny and a repeated and much dreaded poking of his acute abdomen. During the course of such a one hour ordeal, he would have to gather strength to assume a knee-elbow position and also roll to the right and the left as wished by the student percussing on his torso. The most detested part were the ‘per rectal examinations’. His irritation was aggravated more and more with every repetition. He felt bugged to the supreme point of exasperation so that by the time Rov was in the wards at 9 AM on 19^th December, Chauhan had already fled.

The sad part of it all was that Chauhan left without the knowledge that Rov and his colleagues had made free the investigations for his disease and would have provided all the materials for the surgery of his condition. He was also perhaps unaware that practical examinations were over the very day he left. 

The Gallbladder Story

The Gallbladder Story
(ABOUT HANDS SOAKED IN BILE)

I learn that gall is the bitterness of feeling and exasperation.

In three years I have seen more than a thousand gallbladders removed from the diseased. I wonder if the fetish of our surgery department with the sacrifice of this pear-shaped organ matches the fecundity of the ever-increasing incidence of indisposition of this reliquary of bile, with the said prolificacy being generously abetted by the radiologist’s acumen.

I have been reading about Middle Age theories about humors or vital fluids of human body, of which excesses of two- yellow bile and black bile, were supposed to cause aggression and depression and I feel like distancing myself from the present day evidence-based thinking and going back into the above-mentioned times, particularly for this subject, and propose a corollary that the rise in hostility and melancholy in our society is responsible for the inimical increase in gallbladder diseases!  

And thus the blade of the surgeon is still at work, in full fervor, ever-busy in executing gallbladders and thus his hands are soaked in bile! One can only ask to soak no more!

Living Misunderstood

MISUNDERSTOOD

I wouldn’t speak up because I fear,

I will be more misunderstood!

Already in trouble for all I care,

Speaking more than I should.

Whatever few words I utter,

To convey the right or explain the wrong;

I fail to make it less bitter,

And I seek a way, ponder all so long.

What’s causing distress and so much mess,

Lot of it repressed, I can’t express;

For fear of being misunderstood,

Re-live through all the ill feelings withstood.

Every passing moment, it grows so strong,

Words scare me and infinite thoughts throng;

I am muted and this state could prolong,

It will thus remain and could be yearlong.

Someday, hate will transmute into love,

To be detested to that end I need to be tough;

For all I said in silence will be heard above,

Until then, I will think I haven’t said enough.


Two videos: One by Jon Bon Jovi and another by Robbie Williams:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Lg_ISGGW4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYAifpU8S3E

Junk Talk

The 1^st time I broke the tail-lights of my car; it broke my heart too, and left me truly inconsolable. On the 2^nd occasion, my mind was shuttling among varied emotional states.

Today, when it repeats itself the 3^rd time, I am force-fed philosophy.

An inside voice is reverberating, “Seldom put your life in back gear!”

And, as I must, I am writing as such, like always, to break the ennui.

Incident One: The Post Without Peradventure

That February, Rover, my car, was only a one-month-old road-roamer, when it realized the predicament of its master’s road sense.

I and two of my colleagues went to our HOD’s home on the sad occasion of the demise of his mother and instead of returning via the safe route we had taken to reach there, I embarked on a hazardous short-cut way back. That tricky lane needs some description because regrettably, I would discover that it was a dead end.

The topography was something like this:

The main road was a steep incline of 60 degrees and the lane in question, branched off from the former at 120 degrees to the right and curved back like an ellipse, and importantly, all the time, descended several feet every second of Rover’s excursion, besides thrilling the occupants with its transverse span of just a couple of inches added to Rover’s own!

To steer back Rover in that lane craning my head behind was defying prudence and my ability was check-mated when it rammed against an electric post. The same moment, the world felt like coming to a halt. I clasped my head with both hands and froze. Mukhi and Baideo were making unintelligible noises. Gradually, I could scan people pouring out into the lane. My damaged car in that lepto-lane was scene for overwhelming pathos!

Incident Two: Baker’s Special and a Crash

Simone sat next to me in Rover, parked in front of Baker’s Special and I was waiting for her to finish chomping at a hot dog and a sandwich. As soon as it was done, I jump-started Rover in back gear and straightway crashed against a goods carrier mini-truck that had stealthily juxta-positioned itself behind my vehicle in that darkness. That served me the pot-pourri of myriad emotions; that of rage, guilt, fear, vexation and agony. Simone tried her utmost to dissolve them, partly succeeding to produce an outer calm, but inside me, the incident felt like damnation!

Incident Three: Garage woes

Today, early in the morning, I did it again, just while taking Rover out of my garage, in back gear. I, however, did not become fretful. Instead, I dropped my head and pondered for some length of time.

By the end of the day, my enlightenment features the following, so to say, conclusions:

1. In life, and always before dying, one has to spot the important things when one looks behind.

2. The penchant for repeating the same mistakes is obtrusive nuisance.

3. Repetitive patterns have a universal distribution.

4. One can never have a correct knowledge of one’s potentials.

5. A hat-trick is a milestone.