Medico

It was as if I was getting raped by the exam. Now the trauma is over. I’m in an attempt to heal the wounds. Three days of vacation acted as a pain relief. I have almost forgotten it. But I can’t forget the live patients kept in exam as my cases. Well, I can’t do anything to help them. I don’t know what to do… and I don’t know how to do it. I’m zero; I know nothing. Bookish knowledge is there but it is also not complete. I can make mistakes… gross mistakes and can kill the patients who suffer from nothing serious. I don’t know how to insert IV… and I don’t know cardiopulmonary resuscitation. And I’m not supposed to know it.

In vacation I happened to watch a Hindi movie 3 idiots .It was funny; it described the condition of students who act as parrots and remember things without understanding. It was about engineering students. If it would have described same condition for medicos… it would have been a horror movie… a horror show rather than funny. Can you imagine students like us dealing with real patients; prescribing drugs, giving injections… without diagnosing the disease?
And we are going to do it… in one month or two if we pass the mindless exams… to prove your mindlessness to do such atrocities without feeling guilty. And I want to pass. I need to pass. I won’t be able to achieve my future if I don’t pass. If I don’t pass I have to pretend to be mindless once again for the period of exams… and have to stop thinking.

I don’t hate books… I love bookish knowledge. But I also love practical knowledge which is not impractical (as given in some practical books… you can’t shake a patient with fluid in chest violently enough to hear roars like sea waves…. You just can’t percuss on painful ICD.) And I hope I’ll get it when I become an intern. I must know what is the best thing that I can do at present to save the patient… in this situation? I must know how to do it… and I must be able to apply it in an emergency… but not as a profession.

I know today’s knowledge is not complete… not even sufficient to treat all patients. Sometimes you have to treat the patient when you know nothing about the disease… even if you are an expert… you try to give life support all rest is patient’s luck. I must be able to do it in case of emergency till I handle the patient to a professional life support machine doctor… I don’t want to make it my profession. I just want to increase the knowledge level we have… I just want to find some better solutions… to treat the disease, to diagnose it… to make the patient better, to understand a human in the patient. And that’s why I want to become a scientist.7 Healing