Changing wards and changing course

Well it has been almost a month now since we changed wards. The past six months had really flown by, and suddenly we were in another ward. There were times when I had counted the days when we would get to change appointments. Life was that frustrating, and sometimes you just wanted to get away from the ward.

But in hindsight what we had learnt during the past six months was going to stand us in good stead for the rest of our lives. There was more than a tinge of sadness when the day came when we actually had to leave. The friends we’d made, the place that had become so familiar to us, we would have to leave behind.

Although I had lost more than eight kilos in six months (by the way I was not someone who needed to lose weight), I had also gained a strange mix of things along the way. Come to think of it the most important must be the ability to take criticism.So one month later I find myself in a surgical ward under a new boss. The hardest part it seemed was getting used to the new work. While the working hours were definitely less hectic, there were so many new things to learn and so many new protocols that the first few days were tentative and full of mistakes. On my first day “on call”, I got the dreaded call at about 2 a.m. Apparently a canula was out in the Burns Unit (a canula is the plastic gadget they put in your hand to get intravenous access and “out” is the term they use when it’s not working).

When I finally made my way to the Burns Unit, to my great horror I found that one leg and one hand of the child was burnt and covered in gauze. The other leg was swollen and there were no veins visible on the other hand. My heart sank a thousand feet.It was going to be a long night. So remembering my anatomy as best as I could I started to insert the canula to where veins ought to be. Luckily for me the nurse’s shift hours changed and a kindly experienced nurse came to my rescue and managed to get the canula in.

My first casualty night was also eventful (“casualty” being the night when the night admissions come to your ward). It was also the night of the World Cup final. We had settled to watch the match after having finished the round early. We were not expecting any admissions that night! But when Adam Gilchrist started his blitz I decided to have a small nap just in case some admissions were to come later in the night.

I was woken up by a blast. Thinking that I had missed the match and that we had somehow won I tumbled out of bed ready to celebrate. But instead was met by nurses running here and there in panic. Someone suddenly pointed at the window and what we saw was a fireworks display. While some were confused I immediately knew it was anti aircraft fire (I had watched the live CNN coverage of the Iraq war). And so there were no more admissions for the day.

I was by now also thinking of what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was strangely attracted to preventive medicine. It seemed logical and cheaper to prevent all these illnesses rather that spend millions of rupees and so many tears on trying to cure them.

In fact surgery is the last line of defence. It is all that we try to avoid - pain, injury and bleeding; all to cure. And too many people it seemed had to be rescued at the last line of defence.