Today is just one day break I've got after an year long of Internship. Ahh...it amazes me to recall how far I've come, what all I went through, from seeing deaths and pretending emotionless to seeking love for self in between. I have grown, I have matured for I have learnt the professional aspect of life. Though many more years are to come, yet more than theoretical knowledge it's practicality of life that I've learnt. They will all stay in my memory forever, all the “first-times”!
The first time when I walked through the corridors of the medicine ward as a doctor. First day of work when I saw a soul leaving an old fragile body, I still remember the ashen face, it was the first time I learned to declare death. The day I did a first pleural tap in a patient with severe respiratory distress and how immediately I saw her breathing getting relieved from under such pressure. The first time when I made the biggest blunder of my life. The first time I realised that not everyone has a family and started taking care of an unknown patient. I remember his face, his lean and thin body with a huge abdomen filled with water, just like that of a pregnant woman. How daily we poked him with needles to take out 1-2 litres of water from inside his abdomen. Till the day he died, but he died relieved. The first time when a patient blessed me with happiness and good luck, the first time a patient brought for a small statue of a bird which she made herself and the first time I did lumbar puncture on the same patient to confirm the diagnosis of meningitis.
There was a first time I did a suture, in the CBOT, where life taught me another strange lesson that death is the best when it's sudden for the slow ones are too painful. I have had mornings that began with gruesome RTA’s, blood everywhere, surrounded with casualties and me standing in between, working.
I treasure the memory when I solely assisted a mother into delivering a healthy baby girl. The first time when I had to repair the episiotomy wound of a mother who had delivered a big baby. Although I always had a liking towards the subject of Paediatrics but my first day began with fear for the sensitivity of the treatment required for tiny little babies. Where the counseling of a mother comes first, even before you touch her child for anything. But ironically the day ended with beautiful smiles on the small kids. I reminisce about the day when I held a newborn in my arms for the first time. The days and nights that I spent sleepless looking after the babies in the NICU gave me a satisfaction rather than fatigue.
Then came the day when I finally learned how to put a cast on a fractured joint or limb. I recalled the statement everyone used to say, just clear your entrance then life would be fun in a medical college, just clear your MBBS & internship would be fun, but it was in my rural posting when I finally mastered how to survive.
And then sequentially after few minor postings I finally faced the dreadful “general ER”. It was a menace. Hundreds of patients in just a 12-hour shift, never thought of even counting for a day. Standing on toes during the whole shift, treating and advising people to go home, I myself used to return to my room, dead with fatigue. Yet the intriguing thing was the peaceful sleep I used to get once I came back.
To be honest I have always avoided to be in situations where there were cut injuries requiring skills of suturing, this much I was sure of that I disliked them from the core of my heart. I still laugh at myself recalling the day I had my last on-call. My night shift was to end at 8am in the morning and just at 7:30am arrived a little boy with his father. No Matter how much you try to run away from your fears you end up facing them one day. I was in no position to call anyone, neither my seniors nor my juniors, it had to be done by me, solely. So finally I did it. It was my last on-call of a year long Internship and the boy was my first patient on whom I did a suture all alone. (Sssshhhh..he didn't know that, but that little boy taught me patience by expressing it himself, at the age of 8yrs he was bolder than me for he didn't even move an inch while I did it all.)
All's well that ends well! Today is just one day I've got to spend without any calls to attend. From tomorrow I will face a new beginning, a new challenge & a new me!
Signing off.
~©Auldrin❤
