* 24 odd hours in the emergency room * Earlier in the day: Hello, Doctor! Im calling from the emergency room, one of the professors has got burned, kindly hurry to the ER. Maybe his hand got burnt while preparing tea or something, I thought as I rushed downstairs to the ER while calling to inform my senior on the way. As I reached the ER entrance,I had to struggle to make my way through to the patient. As I first saw the patient, I stood stunned. It was not just a minor burn - it was a 100% BURN. Applying what somewhere he only taught, me and doctors from all other specialities could do was declare, No signs of life found. There was commotion everywhere but a silence inside me. The silence of realising that nothing is here to stay. It goes back. Sometimes in the most painful way to where it belongs. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. ~ Sometime in the afternoon ~ Emergency rooms are a tense place. With MIs, gunshots, acute abdomens, stabs, burns to random people just wondering in to maybe get a cure for his occasional lower back pain during emergency hours just cause he was passing by the hospital. Then there is us, you know, the doctors on emergency duty. Theres an ortho guy, a surgery guy (or girl) and one medicine guy, present at all times, and other specialities called in as and when needed. Just a glimpse of how it works, a random patient walks into the ER and complaints of an accident. Both me and the ortho guy look at each other ( both of us in our minds are like, please not mine, not mine). And the CMO asks him, where did you get hurt?, and then he speaks the golden words, Sir, my leg hurts and Im (with a smirk and hi-fying myself in my mind, yes, yes, yes, its his)! And then theres this ortho guy trying really hard to convince the patient that maybe he has some injury on his head too (head injuries are mine!!) and he denies, and all I do is smile at him. Then comes this mother yelling for help, all of us unanimously get up to see what we have got. A 17 year old girl, lying on the stretcher; we check for any signs of life, all three of us check over and over, but nothing, just to confirm by a flat line on the ECG, brought dead, was what the CMO declared. Seeking a history, the family said she fell of the stairs. Life went on, just to know in a few hours that she died cause of hanging!! Really!! why???, why would a 17 year old hang herself, what was in her mind. What was troubling her? School? Friends? Studies? What? Gradually my thoughts fade in the middle of me and the medicine guys fight of hes yours. ~ Later that day ~ 108 rushed in a 12 year old girl, who was blue and cold as ice with no signs of life. Brought dead again. Everyone continued with their work of attending patients we could still help. I sat there and saw the mother, cry, and begging everyone to give the kid some medicine to bring her to life and the father, having no idea of CPR, but still doing it on his dead daughter. And a little boy standing next to them. I saw him and asked him to come to me. I made him sit on my lap, and asked him his name, and all he said was,apna phone do na didi, game khelna hai. As I gave him my phone, and he started playing Fruit Ninja sitting next to me, I couldnt stop but wonder, this little one has no idea what just happened in his life. Ignorance is pure bliss I realised. Questions - a lot of them - in my mind. Seeing teenagers kill themselves by hanging or taking poison, for trivial things, like grades. Is it worth it? Where is the problem? The system? Or the pressure? And so many more things. The realisation of the uncertainty of life, maybe waking up one day and not finding the person I love in this world any more. The feeling of being grateful, for all I have and not realising it. Life is a gift and every moment that you live surrounded by people you love is the true treasure you should value. I realised it, maybe its high time everyone should. ~ Dr. Muskaan Khosla
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 14:26:33 +0000
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