👩‍⚕️THE OTHER SIDE 👩‍⚕️
Time: 3.45 a.m – Peaceful Nights ???
“Jatatavigalajjala pravahapavitasthale
Galeavalambya lambitam bhujangatungamalikam
Damad damaddama ninadavadamarvayam
Chakara chandtandavam tanotu nah shivah shivam”
Brain: “Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?”Â
Heart: (Dub dub dub dub dub heartbeat racing fast).Â
Brain: “Aaaaahhh it’s the alarm.”Â
“But I just closed my eyes.”
“How does it matter, it’s time, I need to check on the patients downstairs.Â
But again, I gave all the necessary instructions on my last visit, they should not need me again.Â
What if the new-borns are hungry or if they oversleep? What if the mother sleeps while feeding the baby? MMMMMaybe I just ask the nurse on duty to have a look. Yeah, this sounds good, if there is a problem, she will call me. “
She picks up the intercom to ask the nurse on duty if all is good.Â
Yet again, her brain plays the angel “But then I am already awake, better I have a look myself” (faces of the new-born babies blink in her eyes).Â
She sneaks out of the bed, hoping that she will be back in the cozy comfort quickly and heads straight up to the dressing room to change into something elegant – Yeah, Doctors don’t get the privilege to step out wearing a night robe in their comfy gown, even in the middle of the night. Why? Well, let us ask our judging selves, what if my doctor comes in a comfy night rob to visit me. My illness goes in a corner and my judging-self starts talking “What a mess, is she really a doctor?” “Look at her, how is she supposed to handle my case?” Is she even hygienic or disciplined enough?”
We have learned to judge people on their appearance. With certain exceptions, we have learned that it’s okay to be a little biased for “the thing of beauty”, after all, we are the society that has labeled fair “Lovely” and skinny “Desirable”. So, judging your doctor who just walked out of the bed is involuntary.
Yes, ironically 12 years of hard work and 10 years of studies, will be easily judged and rendered unworthy in that small minute.
After changing and splashing some water on her face, she is quite awake. Her face and eyes, in particular, are swelled, begging her for some rest. But She is a doctor, she is in charge of the life. How can she, be at ease not knowing her patients’ status, she can’t have mercy on herself. Hence, ignoring her swelled up face, aching body and paining legs. She rushes downstairs to check on her patients with new-born babies. She has facilitated 1 C-Section and 1 Normal delivery in her own nursing home today. The C-Section had twins, then there is an infant from the C-Section of yesterday.
She always gets this proud feeling when a child is delivered healthy, when both the mother and baby are healthy. As if, she herself is the family who was supposed to take care of the mother and as if she herself is the mother who has just delivered that healthy baby. She does not care about the caste/creed/color/appearance of her patients, the only thing that makes her happy is the good health of the mother and baby. But unfortunately, this is something not good enough for the people and society. We have taken healthcare for granted, failed to appreciate their selfless hard work until it has directly affected us. Yes, she does get treated like a goddess when people realize that it is actually about life and death. But, knowing her in person, I want her (and every doctor out there) to know that we literally owe our lives to them. Â
The babies need to be fed milk solution as Mothers won’t still be able to feed the new-borns. Quite often the caretakers doze off and the baby might stay hungry, she has to make sure that the babies are fed and the mother is OK. However, the mother from yesterday’s C-Section was trained on feeding today and should try feeding her baby. Also, the new-borns need to be fed every 2 hours, which means no continuous sleep for mothers. Hence, as a doctor, she prefers putting up a midnight alarm to check on patients if everything is fine. The major risk remains with the patients whose baby is a few days old, as their families/elders tell them how to feed the baby while lying on the bed (being concerned about the mother’s condition). But this is a big “No” and is not at all allowed.Â
Reason? – Mothers are too tired, out of the injury of C-Section or the big fight of normal delivery along with waking up every 2 hours trying to feed their baby and a major possibility is for them to doze off while feeding the baby. There are cases wherein the mother was feeding the baby lying on the bed when she dozed off and the baby suffocated to death due to the weight of the breast. She makes sure to avoid any such incidents by checking continuously on her patients.
After calming down the 1 day old and instructing the nurse to feed him powdered milk, she moves to the next room, and to her surprise the patient is feeding her baby lying on bed and the patient's eyes are closed in sleep. “Why are you lying on the bed, you need to sit and then feed the baby. You are not supposed to lie down comfortably while feeding.” Then she turns to the caretaker and asks the patient's mother in law for why is she not keeping an eye. It is this time, the mom-in-law makes a snarky remark “It’s all a new drama these days, I have fed all kids like that, and nothing has gone wrong. It’s our will how we want to feed the baby, what is your problem.”
She tries to explain “The mother has a very high chance of falling asleep if she is lying down and the baby might suffocate because of the breast weight, as he will not be able to move his head”. The  M-I-L argues back “It's not possible, we all have fed our babies, this is rubbish. Just, release us tomorrow, this is all a drama, we could have delivered at home, doctors just need a reason to cut the stomach. In our times, we delivered all healthy babies at home. These doctors are here only to make money.”
This is the time, it pinches her heart, the patient was in labor for 8 hours. She was continuously monitoring her situation; she could hear the baby’s heartbeat going slower and slower. This is when she asked the mother and family to hear for themselves and let her go for C-section as soon as possible. Delivery at home was not an option here. But she can’t go on explaining everyone – that way her day would need to have an extra 12 hours. “I would complete my medical duties and discharge you as soon as I can. I have no interest but the baby and mother’s health” Before the lady can utter any more nonsense, she turns to her nurse and tells her to be vigilant here and let her know if there are any further issues.
The twins have had their food and are sound asleep, she moves back upstairs, washes her hands, changes clothes, drinks some water and by the time she is back in bed, it’s 4.45 am.
Thanks to her hectic life, sleep is always around the corner for her. She falls asleep right away.
6.00 am – Never Early to Bed but Always Early to Rise!!!
“Jatatavigalajjala pravahapavitasthale
Galeavalambya lambitam bhujangatungamalikam Â
Damad damad damaddama ninadavadamarvayam
Chakara chandtandavam tanotu nah shivah shivam”
Dub dub dub dub.. the heart races again with a pinch of pain in the head.Â
Brain games are here again: “No you don’t need to get up.Â
I promise I don’t need that alarm; I will be back awake with a quick 5 minutes of a power nap.
The patients were fine. The girls? Come on, I will fix a quick lunch in 15 minutes and 10 minutes to get them out of bed.
But the girls need cuddling and then getting ready, that will take 15 minutes. Total 30 minutes, I have an extra 10 minutes, 5 minutes to sleep and 5 minutes to be awake. I can do it.
Aaaahh. See, I passed 5 minutes in all the calculations when I could have slept nicely.”
She drags herself out of the cosy blanket and sleepily moves to the washroom to splash her face awake again. After which she straight away comes back to bed to wake her sleeping beauties up. She is a proud mom of two beautiful daughters Manya & Ananya. They have only 50 minutes for their school bus. The girls toss and turn to sleep back but she lovingly embraces them, kissing them again and again and telling them it’s time for school. After getting the girls out of bed, on their feet, she instructs them to get ready quickly. While the girls are getting ready, she heads to the kitchen to fix a quick yet innovative and tasty lunch. The lunch must be on par with the other kids and if she does not want food back, she better makes it tasty. It is already a pain to feed Manya – she has an inbuilt disrelish towards most of the food. Once the lunches are ready, she gets breakfast on the dining table and rushes to check if the girls are ready.Â
Manya is moving around with her hair still not braided, while Ananya is ready for breakfast with her school bag. She asks Manya to start with her breakfast and she goes on braiding her hair, while she eats.Â
Girls have left for school; she now makes a nice tea for herself and her husband who is reading the newspaper by now.Â
The maid will be here any minute, she quickly checks her messages and catches some news on T.V. She needs to check on her patients again, before going to her workplace.Â
8.00 am - & The Day (which never ended) Begins
At 8.00 she takes a look at the patients. Where luckily, all is good. She then drives towards the hospital, it’s OPD today (hospitals usually have 1 day dedicated for operations and 1 day dedicated to outdoor patient’s check-up) and patients are already queuing out.Â
After checking patients till 2.00 pm, with a 15 minutes tea break, she heads to the college building as she has to give a lecture in the college building. Doctors are supposed to teach medical students as well. On the way, she smiles remembering the funny media person interviewing her on doctor’s day and asking her if she thinks that medical students are not getting proper teachers in India. To be a medical professor in India, it’s not enough to be a doctor, but you have to keep up your research work and you must get papers continuously published. The medical profession has the toughest eligibility criteria for teachers, but people believe in sold media or unauthenticated WhatsApp forwards instead of trying to find out the truth.
At 3.00 pm she is out from the lecture and finally headed towards home.
By 4.00 pm after checking on her patients, she is eager to catch a nap before the patients start flooding in her nursing home.
5.30 p.m. – She has had her hour-long power nap. While she is sipping her tea, the girls show her their Homework and tell her about their school day. Since she is in a good mood, Ananya starts building the pitch “Mom, it’s been so long we have gone out. Let’s eat out today. We are already done with our homework”
She reminds her daughter “There are patients lined up already. O.K Let me see, if there is not much rush, we can go later.”
This is not new, because of the evening patients, she rarely gets time to have a nice family outing. Girls are also accustomed to going out after 9 pm, once the patients have all been attended to.Â
Manya suggests “We can go to Avengers Endgame, what say? Come on mom, it will be fun. I will book the 9 p.m. show.”
She calls up the reception desk and checks on the number of patients. Luckily, it’s not too much of a rush today. She tells Manya to book the movie tickets. But till then, girls need to be done with their studies.Â
After imparting dinner instructions to her maid, she heads to check the patients. Along with 4 new patients, she checks the patient who wanted to leave early. If all is good with her, she can be discharged tomorrow morning. She finds everything good and tells the nurse to prepare the patient’s discharge papers and inform the patient’s family to complete the discharge formalities by tomorrow morning.
9.00 pm - Family Time ????
The girls come downstairs to the parking for the movie and they head straight away to the theatre. As always, they are late but the girls are happy that they could go out. After reaching the theatre, girls happily grab their favorite snacks and are 30 minutes late but they have started with the movie at least.
Her phone rings in the middle of the movie and she gets to know that the family of the patient to be discharged tomorrow is creating a scene. On asking about the exact issue, her staff informs that the family wants to take the patient home right now and they say the charges are too much which they will not pay. She instructs the staff to ask them to wait, she will be in the hospital in 10 minutes.Â
She has to leave her daughters in the theatre. While her husband drives her back, she wonders what is wrong and remembers when the couple first came to her last year. They had lost 2 babies due to miscarriage and had no hopes of conceiving again. It was then, she gave them hope and started the treatment. She even prayed for them (as such she always prays before performing all her operations), she strongly believes God to be the ultimate power and with God’s blessings, nothing can go wrong. With careful medicines, continuous examinations the couple got the blessing of conceiving again in 2 months. She was very careful and did everything to avoid a miscarriage this time. All the efforts and prayers succeeded and the lady delivered a healthy baby 2 days back. The patient’s husband and family were so happy that they called her God and tried to even touch her feet, to which she politely replied that we are just the pawns of God, and I am glad to be doing what I do. At that time, they could not stop praising her hard work, humbleness, and elegance. She remembers clearly explaining the costs to the patient's husband and he himself selected the room and services. This is the usual norm. Yet, today they find the costs too high. Why is it that people find it difficult to pay doctors who actually heal them but are ok spending on entertainment?Â
With all these thoughts going around, she reaches her nursing home. The patient’s family is waiting and a lady calling herself the patient's Aunt comes to her “Madam, these people are asking for too much money. This is a nursing home; it should not be so costly here. This much we pay in big cities.”
She replies “These are the normal charges all our patients pay; we have not charged anything new or extra to you. I work at ABC hospital too and the charges there are just double. Also, the patient's husband was very well aware of the costs and he himself selected the package. Can you please call him?”
The husband who was probably standing nearby hops in and says “No, I never knew”.Â
He is lying to her face; she is in shock and decides it’s better to have a written agreement before delivery. Trust is out of the question with people these days.
After a long series of arguments, she is drained off. She says “Please take the patient home and do not pay anything. Do not come to me for anything going forward”
The family stays for the night. She drives back to the theatre to pick up her daughters, the movie would have ended by now.
12.00 pm - Day Ends (at least for a few hours)
She finally gets to be back in bed for a few hours. until the alarm rings yet again.
These were the 24 hrs of a Doctor’s life. Not even 6 hours of continuous sleep. No compromises on other roles of a teacher, a mother, a wife.
The family who had a problem with charges sends the husband’s younger brother to talk. She calmly talks to him as well. He thanks her for all she did but stresses that the couple is facing a financial crisis and is really hoping for a concession. She believes yet again and agrees to a small concession. The brother is happy now. He says further “We have just 1 last favor to request”. She is really losing it, if he still cries about the payment. But, to her surprise, he explains “We have this insurance claim of 1.5 lakhs, we would be really obliged if you could approve it.”Â
They wanted her to sign an insurance claim of triple the amount of her hospital fee and just acted as if they were paying out of their savings. She still kept her calm and explained that this is wrong, she cannot sign for more than the payment she is receiving and that the amount is very high. But the brother still tries to convince her. Now she very firmly tells him “Sir, there are MCI rules in place, doctors can take fees as per the hospital size and services only. If we ask for more, we can even lose our license. Signing a falsified insurance claim is not only unethical but illegal too. Further, I would like my complete payment without concession. Since your insurance is paying the amount. You should not have a problem being able to afford it. Please deposit the fee today and get the patient discharged.”
She moves out of her clinic.
Isn’t It Time We Reconsider Our Priorities ???Â
Media and society have created an image of doctors as money craving devils.Â
Well, the truth is we can pay 500 Rs for a movie but paying the same or even lesser amount to the doctor for our own health is a problem.
We are a society that treats actors(es) like gods(ess) but the real gods amongst us who actually heal us are considered demons. Why? Because, they ask to be paid for their services.
So, what? if they have spent 10 years amidst books and corpses and stinking blood, stinking medicines.Â
So, what? if they are 24 hours on duty, (leave getting their beauty sleep, even a 6-hour sleep is a luxury). Â
So, what? if they have no family life.
Our situation - We see a Celebrity and we are like “ Shut up and take our money”.Â
Life’s highest honor? This photo of me with Madhuri Dixit.
That day Salman Bhai actually waved at me, I bet he was looking at me.Â
But bro, you stand in front of his building daily. Haan to I am his biggest fan, it’s not easy to see God, you need to work hard.
My daughter resembles Katrina, just too pretty.
We would happily give our money to a Star whose job requires dressing up, glamming up, partying, and a bit of acting. They entertain us and apparently entertainment is our priority over life. Â
Who probably doesn’t even know why the sky is blue, who is our president, or even have a basic life reasoning? And why should they know all this, they earn in millions and live a lavish life even with their ignorance.Â
It is ok even if our favorite actor drives over sleeping people on the road. He has all rights. He is God. But not the doctor who just saved my life – because they are asking to be paid for their service.
We will idolize Priyanka Chopra because she is a self-made woman. Well, so is Indira Nooyi, (maybe a better example), but considering their popularity, we have again failed to notice the genius over a pretty face.Â
Mr. Amir Khan did mention in Satyamev Jayate “Ventilators are used by doctors just to make money”. I wonder, why the country needs so many ventilators – The money mending machine amidst the Corona Crisis.Â
It is high time, we as a society review our priorities and instead of idolizing skin, better idolize the brain. Because Brain is capable of creating something immortal while Skin will just cloth you up and will wrinkle off eventually.Â
And, if you still can’t dodge off your decision to curse doctors, you can prioritize investing your money in your security, which is the Indian Army. But yeah, for our very own sake, it’s high time to correct our inverted pyramid and reset our priorities.
