Such Humour. Much Hurt. Wow

Ankit Sharma's Blog

There seems to be a new fashion of sorts to be a moral police and try to set this world ‘straight’, both sexually and otherwise. Right from using Ram-Leela as the title of a movie that has protagonists of the same name, to banning Comedy Central for being derogatory to women.

Now, the latest incident that has irked us, is the legal case against AIB. Friends, please help me to completely understand the concept. A person abuses another one who laughs hard at it. Then some people, with too much free time and a childhood without Cartoon Network, go ahead and file a complaint, because they were tied down, their eyebrows were cello-taped open and were made to listen to abusive words.

Wait. They weren’t.

Most probably, the conversation at their place went like: “Hey look at them! Saying bad words which will spoil our kids. *Turns to his…

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Conversational Medicine

Every condition does not have a drug to be given for relief. A lot of medical conditions just require patient listening and firm reassurance. After Ayurveda when the gift of western medicine was thrusted on Indians, somewhere down the line it created a notion that each and every symptom can be treated with a specific concoction. This has been specifically observed during doctor training programs known as residencies formally. During out patient hours, personal issues are regarded trivial and unimportant and questions only regarding the disease are asked as if the person needs to be ill with a disease having manifest symptoms. Other than that anything else is deemed unsatisfactory to the diagnostic interests of the doctor and deferred for an unknown period.

Keeping in mind that in such a huge population condition, sitting in a tertiary care hospital, trivial details of patients behavior or life cannot always be entertained by doctors, the concern rather appears to be regarding the training of young doctors in such institutions. Currently tertiary care hospitals are the main focal points of medical education in the country. Not all personal complains are psychiatric in nature. Not all symptoms can be organically explained. The divide between systemic illness and psychiatric illness has remained very shady considering the almost non existence of communication and empathy awareness training during medical school.

The after effect is that we create doctors who can elicit extremely good medical histories but do not understand the Socio economic importance of such histories. We impart treatment grim facedly in a copy book manner but consider to ignore the look of confusion in the patient’s face regarding the same. This is one of the many reasons public health has suffered so much in this part of the world. Health care delivery has ideologically come to be imparted from apex centers only. Even mental health has not been given its due importance. Counseling during patient handling has received the minimum attention too. Why has it been so? Simply because counseling does not command as much monetary benefits as a coronary artery stenting. A medical system which disregards the status of counseling is dangerous for everybody as it leaves opportunity for unnecessary medical procedures and interventions done on patients, nothing short of extortion.

Moreover learning tenets of counseling and conversations do not guarantee a single question correct in mcq exams. Orienting oneself with these other sides of the profession would very popularly be considered a namesake of suicide only, delaying one’s rise in the academic scale and professional ladder, considering that the markers of this rise are purely dependent on representation of well known facts.

Until next time,

Peace to the departed souls at Peshawar.

Atul Gawande on status of health systems in erstwhile India

—— You have very good people with a lot of experience and good training in India. But if you put some of your best and smartest people in dysfunctional systems, it’s demoralising for them and it is unsafe for the others. The easy thing to say is that this is a bad doctor and he will be punished and that will solve the problem. But we all know that it is not the case. ——-

I open at the close

With the ebbing tides of medical school, I pen down this note dedicating it to all those souls who have been around me for all these toiling years and influenced me each moment. It is but a funny coincidence that Id started my hostel life with room 13 only to end in room 260, a multiple of 13 (I somehow found this a boring yet intriguing omen!). It is extremely hard to digest the fact that there are only eight days left in this hostel and college campus. Five and a half years minus these eight days hold details of so many intricate experiences, untold secrets and treasure trips, stories of which shall go down to the grave with us. Walking down the long corridors and aisles of the boys hostel I am suddenly reminded of the many students clamouring around the basketball court during the college fest, running through rainy nights, trying to finish the half painted posters for SPICMACAY, rushing across the ward corridors in tidy white labcoats cramming up the last minute gyne revision tips and eavesdropping into topper conversations at every nook and corner in search of the most difficult to remember viva voce bombs to be crushed inside the interview room.
A few days hence rooms will be emptied, tears shall be shed in silence, gloom shall be exchanged unspoken, room will be made for the coming batches to join MAMC after us; yet somehow the shadows of the inhabitants of these hostel rooms will still remain inside, unhindered and untouched by the new; like imprints, containing old wisdom…life will shift to another place in another time, but the time spent under the roofs of MAMC shall always remain accessible from the deepest parts of our RAM.

Maulanians as they go out of college take with them a treasure trove of lifelong friendships which have crossed all possible boundaries of language and culture. The college’s alumni has experienced such bonhomie and camradry in their fellows as they would get almost no where. Our hearts have been sobered by the multiple faces of India and has enlightened us with the consciousness of belonging to this country and simultaneously our future life directions both for personal gains and the greater good. Just to think that the outgoing batch of doctors are going out into the world to prove their mettle in their fight against human diseases; this was exactly what we had come to college for..to be given a chance to do the same.

Standing at the fag end of the journey, we see a new life opening up to us as we enter the close.

WordPress in India

You are here.
This is a wordpress blog.
Written in India by an Indian.

Why is this particular situation so hard to find?
Or is it because I don’t know of much people who are blogging their way into adulthood?

We Indians should really come up with some innovative ways to communicate the existence of our blogs to one another. We would hardly get to interact if this won’t happen.

Let’s start afresh. For example, if someone is reading this blog please take some time off of your precious schedule and feel the urge to leave your invaluable comment mentioning the country of origin and the time since when you have been writing.

Disclaimer: This is by no means an effort to sneak a peek into your private lives but just a mild effort in knowing my fellow bloggers and get to interact more.

Medical blog writing

Well, this blog was meant to be an area of free association (in Freud’s overtones) where I could express every moment of my life’s experience without waiting to think twice regarding screening of them thoughts and to pour in all that have happened with me which have helped shape up the me today.
And how could you separate the medicine from the doctor? Or the doctor from the medicine?
So mostly here forth the blogposts will involve medical stuff a bit more than usual. And I don’t think that’s going to be a burden for my readers at all. 🙂

Spiralling to an end

It is hardly difficult to imagine that the ending days of Med school are near. The dear hostel room would have to be left under order by the Dean for someone else to find shelter in the safe haven that I used to call semi-home for the last 5 years. The thought of it is scary.
Added to that comes the doubt’s regarding career choice. The worst part about medicine is when you pass out of Med school you realize there are 19-20 defined specialties of which you have to choose any one in your life which you’d pursue throughout. Now you can well imagine how at a certain tender age one is supposed to decide the best for him all of a sudden. So the best option possible is to write the selection test, close your eyes, wait for the results and contemplate. Then start again. This is the plan in short. To keep on studying till you clear the exam. That can happen in a year, in two years. One just needs to wait for the angels to look towards him and shine the eternal light some holy day :P.

Becoming a doctor has its pangs, I’ve known that all along. And most of it lies in the way the branches have been designed. To pick and choose between different medical specialties. What if someone wants to do it all? What if someone wants to read everything? Its a matter of time only that things will get clear. After all I have been looking at Medicine from an academic point of view mostly. Once the professional part begins it is bound to become stressful along with the perks of just any other job. Only with the added feeling of getting a halo behind your head. 🙂

Peace to world…

The Truant

I have a belief;

Learnt to not let go of

The trails of happiness

Which Seem to linger..

Time has lost its pace–

The rolling Stone turns

Another flattened face

To the stream across..

The earth sleeps.

When the mountain rises

With a whole lot of surprises;

Keep the sun ahead;

I move on

Treading the darkest paths

Into the pits unknown

Flourish

Shed all your black feathers
And move ahead
With the distant glint of
A light; visible not too far
Is it yellow?
The colour of the sun?
Is it the sky
Visible amidst this
Black veil of hopelessness?
Know not, but hope wells
Up like the spiralling force
Of a whirlpool,
Sucking everything towards
The hungry center;
Hope, that gives life
Yet another reason to
Flourish.

Ramble on Ayn Rand (Freewrite)

Found this amazing piece of article today. In short, an Ode to Ayn Rand. Cassandra writes brilliantly expressing both her inner thoughts on her doubts in life and how she has made all the confusions her strength and moved ahead with courage. Ayn Rand is an inspiration in my life too. I got exposed to her to the idea of Objectivism when I was in my Third year of Medical School and somehow I’ve come to relate to this concept of life, moreso in the clinical setup; the power to act according to one’s own mettle and to keep up the spirit even if the outcome is not what the world agrees to.
Thank you @Cassandra for sharing such a ravishingly enlightening post with the world.

Peace.