Few days ago people in Walsang had seen a caricature wandering in their village for the first time. Now they know me as a doctor who works in PHC, and I get many smiles and salutes right from the moment I get down from the bus. The kids say, “Look a doctor is walking!” some brave ones come to me and ask, “are you a doctor,” and when I say yes, I see their eyes shining with pride. This’ the glory of this occupation, people learn to put their faith in your hands and they look to you as something special…
It might make you slightly grandiose when you find people waiting for you making queues and depending on you for their health and well being… it would be appropriate if I were some superhuman… but I’m not. I too am a human, and I too fall ill. Yesterday I was on the bus stop for more than two hours but couldn’t catch a bus thanks to my ill health and the crowd and Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ ruling the already crowded buses. I couldn’t attend the morning OPD and I got a permission to come in the afternoon from the MO via my cell phone. And when I arrived here at around four pm I saw kids running into their homes after seeing me and then their mothers coming out and then they asked me, “Doctor where were you in the morning, we waited for you…”
I know being a doctor is not an easy thing to do… it’s a big responsibility. And it’s a thrill to make those people happy and satisfied with whatever resources you have with you. And it’s a big challenge to work in areas with scant facilities like these PHCs (and also something like my big hospital)! And it’s a lot of fun to play angel when you’re just a tiny human… and you get thousands of blessings every time the patients feel better after visiting you……
But to me, something is missing here…. I feel sorry, but this’ not the work that’ll give me complete satisfaction… I want more. I want to make each and every health center to have good health facilities like good medicines in sufficient quantity, good diagnostic tools, good surgical equipments, good transport facilities, and good care. I want every doctor to play angel and not robot. I don’t want this difference like rural and urban health facilities, and rural lying far behind the urban ones. I want every doctor to practice logically if not ideally. And I crave to make the treatments safer, I want every disorder to have cure. I want to make people really happy, even when I’m not there to treat each and every one of them. I want to become a scientist and want to work on brains of us… and also want to make improvement in the health condition of people in the world. Just figuring out what I shall do, and where I shall make a start to achieve it…
