In the beginning, her mind was a palette, on which eager heaps of paint sat, so full of pigment and potential. The heaps were arranged neatly, each one aware and wary of their place on the palette. The yellows trembled in excited spicules. The reds huffed and puffed their chests out and drew a clear border around themselves. The greens were cordial to the others, but the blues were mildly melancholic and kept to themselves.
She picked up a paintbrush and fanned out the delicate bristles with her thumb. Her gaze fell on the blank canvas in front of her, and then shifted to the palette of expectant paints. It was the first time she was stepping out of her comfort zone and into the uncharted waters of Art, and all in a bid to make some sense of the challenges that lay ahead of her.
She hesitated, a part of her reluctant to mix the pure pigments together. āIf I do something wrongā, she thought, āall this pristine paint will be muddled to the most unattractive grey and all of it will be wasted! And who knows what the canvas might look like when that happens.ā
Shaking those thoughts away, she focused on the good that might unravel in front of her and stepped boldly towards the easel. A faint smile made its way across her face as she dipped the brush into the yellow and raised it to the canvasā
A flood of new faces, voices, sights and sounds swept over her as she pushed open the heavy doors of the lecture theatre. Her heart beat like a drum, swift and steady, over the buzz of chatter in the room. She spotted some familiar faces beaming out a welcome and, relieved, made her way towards the friends who had fortunately landed a place alongside her; on the first day of Medical School.
She was hurled into a whole new world where a whole new language dominated the speech of professors, seniors, and bright-eyed peers. A thousand Latin anatomical names, long and unpronounceable names of drugs, endless equations involving enzymes and metabolitesā¦ The novelty and excitement of it all brimmed, overflowed, as she took in every lesson and gave each new day everything she had.
Fluid strokes of bright lemon yellow radiated out in whorls on the canvas, fervently kissing every corner it encountered. Such was the joy of new experiences, new friendships, and new seasons in life! She turned to contemplate the palette and dipped the sun-kissed brush gingerly into the red paint. Spreading the pigment on an empty spot on the canvas, she let out a tiny gasp as the protesting red paint instantly set it on fire with a blazing orangeā
Yet another sunset was missed by those who were hunched over their books encased within the glass walls of the silent library. The seats were molded to the shapes of all those who stayed behind in attempts to cram just a little more information into their tired minds. The stress was boiling, bubbling and building up around her; her fellow classmates devoted every waking moment to turning the texts into memory, and seemed to want to do nothing else.
Not her, though. She was determined not to trade the wonder of the setting sun for anything, even if it meant lifting her head out of her books and sacrificing a few minutes of every day. As she marveled at the expanses above her, it was an undeniable reminder of the greater perspectives she ought to seek, instead of being microscopic about things like microbiology.
As she loaded more and more red paint onto the brush, the gleaming yellow between the bristles was snuffed out slowly. Red wailed its way onto the canvas like a fire-engine, carving out fierce valleys amidst the yellow and orangeā
It had all happened so suddenly! The vascular surgeon was unwinding the dressings of a patientās failing arteriovenous fistula, and there was the first flash of red she could remember as she peeked over his shoulder. Fresh arterial blood spurted out in a defiant triumph. A stunned silence followed as the blood gushed out in pulses, soaked through the discarded dressings and dripped onto the surgeonās shoes. The elderly woman shrieked and hid her face in horror. In one swift move, the surgeon regained his composure and gripped her geyser-arm tightly, all the while giving calm instructions to the nurses and junior doctors who scurried around him.Ā
Her flustered heart settled as she watched how the doctors and nurses handled the situation with professional ease. It swelled with pride for the team, and the hope that one day, she, too, would be able to award peace to the anxious.
The warmth of the canvas was now almost too much to bear. Her eyes smarted from the flame-red, orange and yellow. She drenched the paintbrush in turpentine and dabbed it dry on a paint-splattered cloth. The delighted greens were next to be loaded on, and they welcomed the journey from the palette to the canvas. However, stubborn residues of the red paint blended with the green, and a dirty brown color trailed behind the brush as she dragged it across the canvasā
From all medical and surgical points of view, this patient was recovering very well indeed after his Abdomino-Perineal Resection; his pink, healthy stoma was discharging a green-brown paste. The colorectal team doctors opened the bag for a routine check of the stoma, and the putrid smell of fecal matter swept mercilessly through the cubicle. The entire team on ward rounds, nearby patients and nurses tried to hide it, but reeled visibly. Ā
āI want to die. Do you know how much dignity you took away from me when you gave me this?ā Gesturing wildly at his stoma, an obese, balding man shook with visible anger and grief as his dysphonic voice trembled. The colorectal consultant stood metres away, mute as the patient continued his tirade. āI thought you said I could still be independent and control my bowels after you cut out most of the damned thing. The next thing I know after waking up, my anus is sewn shut and I have to live with the sight and the smell of my feces collecting in this bubble forever.ā
After mumbling a brief explanation about the technical and anatomical difficulties encountered during the operation which necessitated the creation of a permanent stoma, the consultant quickly turned to his house officer and muttered, āRefer to PSY, this man is depressed.ā He then turned on his heel with marked relief, glad to be rid of this situation, and moved on with the rest of the ward round.
There was such a stark discrepancy between the patientās expectations and his reality, and nobody seemed to see him as, God forbid, a human, any more than his bed number and problem list. From that point onwards, she swore to always try giving patients the attention and empathy they needed and deserved, even if it meant added effort and inconvenience.
The mud-tracks of brown over the initially vibrant canvas irked her. This was exactly what she had feared; losing control and clarity of her painting and not being able to erase what she did not wantā
There was a paralleled loss in faith in what she had always revered. After all, were not doctors meant to first do no harm? Why were they hurting instead of healing patients with words said or left unsaid? She struggled to find meaning and good role models in a hectic world with ārealisticā expectations, unwilling to accept that doctors were slowly losing touch with humanity.
The subdued hues of blue remained unadulterated on the palette. With an unsettled sigh, she reached for a new paintbrush and scooped up the paint. She began to apply it on the canvas, willing her uneasy mind to let go of all these gnawing thoughts and worriesā
She was a newly admitted middle-aged lady with two weeksā history of shortness of breath, bone pain and easy bruising. Blue-purple islands of ecchymoses lurked beneath her papery skin. She drew in air in sharp wheezes through plastic nasal prongs and fidgeted anxiously in her bed whenever the doctors came around.
The dreaded news came in the form of an apology, computed tomography and bone scans: she had a primary breast carcinoma that had ravaged her spine and lungs ruthlessly, leaving behind traces of metastasis. The team started her immediately on palliative chemotherapy, and she could do nothing but resist the terrible emetic effects and accept the looming reality of death.
Ā Recalling her resolution, she decided not to let this time go to waste. She spent every morning before and evening after the dayās activities with the anxious lady who was trying her best to stay strong. They spoke of happier things, like her beloved kindergarten students, favorite foods and past-times, each conversation ending with a grateful, āThank you for your time, thank you for being a friend.āĀ
Stepping back from the easel, her heart lifted as she saw the painting coming together. The blues had somehow managed to gather the unruly colors, and invited a delicate balance onto the canvas. The only thing that remained for her to do was to add some highlights and bring some depth to the paintingā
Tissues lay crumpled in a white heap as she sat in numbed silence with the ladyās grieving brother outside the Intensive Care Unit. In the span of two short weeks, the patient had deteriorated abruptly and heaved her last few breaths while intubated and unconscious. She had silently slipped away in the early hours of the morning, free from her fear and pain at last.
Life, as she learnt, went on. It had to. It did notācould notāstop indefinitely when it encountered death, and there was a certain kind of resilience that grew from loss. It was the kind that basked in the warmth of a life well-lived, and mourned over death without growing a callus around itself.
And then she would learn that the art of medicine was indeed in searching for beauty and courage in the depths of disease and despair, and drawing meaning from these dualities without losing faith, hope and love for humanity.
In the end, her mind was a palette with a constellation of shades smudged together in hapless harmony. What was once a simple distribution of pure pigments on a wooden palette was now a beautiful mess of hues; what was once a naked primordial surface was now a symphony of colors with form, movement, shape and texture! The colors were united on the canvas in a masterpiece of solidarity, each one complementing and augmenting the rest. It was a glorious transformation of both canvas and artist.
And still, there were many more blank canvases waiting for her to paint on.
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