A drunken dad hits his nine year old child with a liquor bottle in the
heat of the moment; the child suffers a grievous ocular injury. While the
grandfather was narrating the story of how the child was playing with glass
bottles and hitting them against the wall, the child sat at the examination
chair stoically. The surgery was suggested to them, the grave visual prognosis
too. The child remained the same. Stoic.
In the counselling room an hour later, while the costs were being
explained, the expenses incurred suddenly hit the father. He felt unable to pay
up, not for the surgery, but the harm he effected. I wasn't eased to see the
father playing up his guilt by making the son sit on his lap and telling him to
be brave in as many meaningless words as he could muster. It only broke me when
the child began to cry. He cried for a long time, while everyone signed up the
consent form for him. He cried all at once for his vision that was never to be
the same again, for his father, for the family and for the ordeal that he would
have to undergo. He was helpless, just as much.
I sat there examining another patient, doling out words of consolation to
the child intermittently. I sat there feeling helpless despite being a part of
the only helpful exercise the child had seen since last evening. I could help
but not promise a thing. I made a quiet resolve to get better at my job, to
treat such a child well, the best that could be done. The injury could have
been an accident that it wasn’t. If I were god I would change the circumstances
for the family, especially the child but I am not god.
That for me is the essence of being a Doctor. I can help only with what
I have been trained for. I cannot promise and I definitely do not heal.
If god is for real and if we know exactly how it is why not train people
to become like it! What are we doing instead, training doctors?
HAPPY DOCTORS DAY.
Here is to being human!
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