First times (TheTelegraphicTales)

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❤

3️⃣ The Telegraphic Tales

*Perfect-Strangers*

Finally I decided to visit my favourite coffee shop

Looking for a new story, struggling from writer's block.

I saw a stranger across the hall

So still, no movement at all.

Her face buried deep in the books

My eyes awaiting glimpses of her looks.

I took steps towards her, but to my despair

There she was sitting, on a wheelchair.

Poor young lady, in her early thirties

Her eyes seemed to have many stories.

Some untold, some ready to unfold

I listened dumbstruck, 

till my coffee turned cold.

A beautiful woman, inside and out

At the age of spring, she was facing drought. 

A lot can happen over a cup of coffee

Stranger I was, yet now framing her biography.

She wants to stay alive, through what I write

Giving me a fantastic tale every night.

She is very sick, with enduring pain all over

Says wants to die looking pretty, with a great makeover.

Often now, she starts feeling groggy

A strong soul, fighting in a weak body.

I meet her daily, over a cup of coffee

And I am writing her story very slow,

For I know if it completes soon,

She will lose the strength to keep going,

She will not have desires to live anymore.

Miracles do happen, with her we know they won't

Keeping her cheerful, she calls me her only hope.

Life has a strange way of giving opportunity,

She was the one in search of eternity.

And I was a wanderer on a lonely shore,

She came into my life as a mighty saviour.

What is it about the bus rides? - Glimpses...

Summers or winters, have you ever enjoyed the morning bus rides? Is it some fantasy or curiosity I dont understand but even now everytime I catch an early morning bus say around 6-8am, I rush for the window seat. The air is very fresh at that hour, maybe because the vehicles haven't hit the roads with their smoke yet. Or maybe I like exploring the outside world while the bus travels from place to place.

Strange it is that, I actually prefer long rides in a bus, which normal people unlike me don't! I put on my favourite earphones (the red ones) with my favourite music and as I cross every new place I just observe, from the roadside 'dhabas' to the big city malls. On the way there are many sweet shops, but then that is what Kolkata is famous about, Right? Those cute children playing at the field, and the ones walking towards school with heavy bags on their backs, to them it is like a burden of the whole world, they have no idea how its going to feel when they are out of the school, entering into a dramatic college life and when they will be away from home.

As the songs are playing, flashes of memories strike my mind, some old fainting some old but still sharp & recallable, remembering people or moments linked to it, or that guy who sang for me. Yes, he did, in a public vehicle, "pehla nasha pehla khumaar", just for me, and no one actually stopped him because his voice was very melodious. Had he stayed with me for some more time, I would have fallen for him! There is also this another song "jaane tu ya jaane na" title track of the same movie, me and my best friend used to sing it all the time and relate ourselves with the characters, I was 'meow' and he was 'rats', this must be somewhat 10yrs ago, we are still together and counting though we didn't end up like its in the movie, but we are still happy and laughing at our childish behaviour.

I am not a miser, its not about the money also but yesterday I just walked 1.7Km to get to the main road only to take a bus instead of cab. I was exhausted but it felt good (maybe I lost some pounds, hahaha). The bus I boarded stopped in the traffic jam for quite a long while, and still my eyes kept looking here and there exploring, in search of something new, AND to my surprise I saw an "akhada" with many big-big hatte-katte pehelwans just wearing boxers, I laughed at myself wondering for this I left the cab but I was amazed to see how these pehelwans workout, God its tough!!! You know what even the busiest of the roads and traffic have their very own way of providing entertainment like today I saw, how at one side of the road there was a couple fighting, screaming at each other while on the other side, one newly wedded couple just snogging on the roadside with all those cosy PDA's.

I also saw an old lady standing outside a pricey saree shop, just staring, maybe she didn't have the money, or whatever but it gave me Goosebumps, I remembered my childhood, my parents started a life out of scratch, but never gave up on the struggle so they earned every bit of it. It gave me a thought, my mum must have also liked a saree someday somewhere which she couldn't buy or didn't tell papa about, due to financial crisis, but that was the past, now I felt stronger, working harder, earning well enough so that she just has to look at something, like it and it will be hers!

What is it about the bus rides, I am still comprehending, why have they become so exciting to me, is it because I never got this much freedom of travelling alone before, or am I finally becoming confident, trying to stand up on my own legs, Or maybe 'that one day' is the reason behind this race that I have joined in, the day when I asked him to get down the bus, and leave me, pain in eyes, both sides, but the tear glands turned dry, just as he got down the bus, I started getting up on my feet. He knows this, he wouldn't say it, but somewhere deep down he too is proud of me, and what I have become.

"C'est la vie"...Yet I know whenever I decide to halt, when I get tired or frustrated with everything, even if its for a little while, where will I want to go, there in the laps of my MaPa, to get the strength again, to run again & to be strong again because that's the only place where I find ALL my peace!

So I am ending this up asking you a question dear reader, do you have your own memories of riding in a bus? Or it may not be the bus, but something else which catches you by surprise every now and then with flashes of memories of the past.