Recently I finished up with my postings in Paediatrics Department. Another month full of experiences. But this time, our actual teachers were those little flowers who sometimes made us smile at their worth-seeing activities and on the other hand rendered us with aching hearts seeing them in pain. I wondered every time how does a doctor understand what is going wrong with the child. But gradually I learnt that nature has made no problem without a solution. And that is how we make out what lies at the root of the cries, shrills or grunts of those babies. Of course my favourite section was the Neonatal ICU where I spent the most adorable moments of my life. When last year I was posted in the same department, I wrote the first prescription of my life, for a newborn baby. I clicked a photograph of that document.
Clinical postings make you so strong that you start doing those things which you are afraid of. But the fact is, as soon as you abstain from clinics, you go back to the first step again. During my postings, I myself have felt the confidence of intervening in almost every medical problem that comes into my way. This reminds me of yet another adventure I did with my friends at hostel. According to my diary, it was 30th January 2009, when Ishan rushed to my room at around 10pm and showed me the thorn stuck to the dorsum of his foot. He sustained that thorn prick while playing football barefoot. He never followed instructions to wear shoes while playing. And I remember that football which I used to call as ‘iron-ball’ since it was damn heavy and hard.
Every time someone got injured, he used to come to me for proper cleaning and dressing of the wound since my room is the nearest to every place one can play at. So, Ishan also came to me finding it difficult to take the thorn out. First I felt that he had come to me merely out of habit of showing injuries, but when we attempted removing the thorn, I felt it was no easy task. The thorn, probably of rose plant, seemed to be angular and had followed a curved path across the skin. So it was not coming out easily. I heat sterilised my forceps, took out a fresh scalpel blade and started on his foot with a great fear in my heart. But he encouraged me to go ahead and told me that it would not give him pain even if I cut his whole foot off. I knew that sounded filmy but yet I started trying with great care. He encouraged me to keep confidence reminding me of how good I had been at dissections. And thus I went ahead.
The real challenge was yet to follow. I had earlier cut dead bodies with no blood in them. But this was a live stuff and as soon as I pricked my blade on his skin, there was blood all around. A large amount of blood coming out of just a ‘next to pin-prick’ cut, and I felt like running away. I kept on cleaning the blood with antiseptic solution and kept working with the other hand. Ultimately I succeeded in taking the pretty big thorn out. It was really from rose plant, curved at its middle portion that made it difficult to come out. I dressed the wound and gave him a hug for showing such faith in me. He regarded that day as my first ever surgery and I regarded him as my first (and fortunately, a courageous) patient…
No comments:
Post a Comment