I was sitting in the Emergency Operation Theatre with a patient lying in front of me on the operating table....
DEAR DIARY
I was sitting in the Emergency Operation Theatre with a patient lying in front of me on the operating table. I was mad because shifting that patient to the operating room with the help of workers had taken more time than I had expected. (Why was that? I’ll tell you why. We as a nation have forgotten that our actions have consequences. And sometimes those consequences do not just affect us, but also affect innocent people as well. More on this some other day!) So I was sitting in a chair, trying to do a little something called ‘small talk’ in order to make the patient feel comfortable. I asked her what her story was. She told me she was badly injured in a car accident while going to Murree with her family. She suffered from a spinal injury and has been paraplegic since then. She has been bedridden for two years, so she has developed bed sores of grade IV (I urge you not to Google that term; you will not be pleased with what you see). Her husband left her after the accident. He took the kids as well. He does not let them visit their mother. And to add insult to injury, he beats them up as well.
She stopped talking after narrating her story and I sat there in complete silence. I did not know what to say. Tears rolled down my cheeks. In that moment, I did not care who saw me; my colleagues, the staff nurses, my seniors. I just could not hold it in. I silently cried through out her operation. That day was a turning point for me. Because in that moment I realized I might not be able to become the doctor that I fantasized to be once.
I cry when I feel the need to cry. I cried like a baby when a patient told me my methodology of bandage had caused her pain.
Doctors in our set-up are considered to be cold-hearted. Well, some of them are stone-cold dead inside. All I read and hear about everyday is that doctors should be compassionate. A doctor is a messiah and a messiah isn’t supposed to feel anything else other than the patient’s pain.
This is all very confusing for me. I do not want to stop feeling. I want to be kind. But to do that, I have to step into the patient’s shoes. When I do that, I cry. I cry and I stress about it all night and all day. I have nightmares about it. I write about it.
If I cannot stop myself from being emotionally affected by all this, how will I ever find the strength to actually treat patients? Will my hands not stagger? How will I make a better judgment if my head is clouded with emotions?
Will I never amount to be a good clinician? Or, will I eventually turn into a cold-hearted and ruthless doctor? Will I give up on my dream of becoming a physician because I do not have the guts to keep my emotions out of this profession? Am I even supposed to keep emotions out of the profession? What is the right amount of empathy? Will I be ever taught these things?
