Complications

So, when you step into 2nd year, you see the reality. You move into the clinical side of your course. A walk through the hospital becomes a regular feature of your hours in college, and perhaps, many, after college too. You see people, up close. And you see the pain, the tears or the simple resignation on faces. Suddenly, medicine finally starts living up to the name it has always had: Human.

Medicine is not about books. Its not about having to read 1000 pages of information, to cram into your head. It is all about using that information to do some good to your patients. To people like you. To humans.

In our first year, we're taught about the basics. We're taught about things happening at cellular levels, some reactions happening in the body all the while long throughout life, stuff found in exact locations of the body. We never encounter the real world. It is truly 'college' that we experience during this time. We take a big step, when we move onto Clinical Examination in Physiology. But, at that time, its just a practical. And on people who are, in the end, healthy. Frankly, we didn't even get the point of doing it all, when we'de come up observations that described in many adjectives, the word "normal".

But, doing it all, on a real patient, who is NOT healthy, is scary to say the least. And that is where the fear comes into play. I've been to some of the operations that my dad performed, and, everytime, I'm awed by the simplicity with which he works. A simplicity which has come after years of experience. And I end up wondering, "Will I ever even reach this place?" I think about having to put in RTs, catheters,c entral lines in a few years, maybe months, and I shudder at the thought. Because, I'm rigged down by doubts. "Will I be able to do at least that?", keeps playing on in my mind.

And, I realise, what Atul Gawande has talked about so well in his book, Complications. Its frightening the first time. But you learn. Yes, at the cost of the patient's health, but you do. And in the end, its all for a better doctor to help in the future. All the doubts, young to-be-doctors have, have been so well discussed by him, its really like reading my own mind. I do feel the need to answer those questions. But the point is, there are no answers. Because, unless you get out there and handle situations on your own, you're never going to make it.

I'm still reading the book, and I'm trying to stick to the central story here ( but I never do). I'll obviously have more to say, as I move ahead with the book, and a lot more, when I face those fears myself.

It is, two more days, and back at college. I'm waiting for it, but, there is an end-of-holiday gloom. Swine flu hasn't reduced yet. It will remain so for a few months I guess. Till then, its me with my complications!!