My love

My Love!

True love is to fall in love with the same person again and again at different stages of life. In my case, it was not a person but it is my profession.

To be frank enough in India it’s too early for any lad or a gal to decide about their future at the immature age of 16 /17. Because once you enter, it is a point of no return. It’s not like as in States that you get bored at the age of thirty with the present one and have a paradigm shift in your profession and become sculptor, or decide to spend rest of your life in the deep jungles of Amazon to study  some rare species of tarantulas or whatever.

So you enter the shrine that’s your medical school with lots of dreams and stars in your eyes. Should we call it ‘Calf Love’? You are so thrilled just be on the campus. Every new day dawned comes for you with new magic unwrapped in the form of either intricacies of human anatomy or the jugglery that nature plays inside your body in the form of physiology, you are just awestruck! Maybe, if you are not inclined you take it in your stride but the new formulas of Pharmacy and waiting endlessly in the OG room for a new life about to enter the world, makes you realize that this is it! Your love gradually is passing on to the second date, you know what I mean if you are aware of 5 date funda in courting!

If not, let me enlighten you on the topic. These fundas are spelt out by Mila Kunis in ‘The Friends with Benefits’. Every date takes you to the ultimate in crescendo manner. Last, I need not elaborate!

Likewise here too we have ‘Night Outs’ but not with your beloved in some cheesy/classy restaurant dining away 3-course dinner with choicest wine or dancing in some disco till you are flat or the next day arrives.

Night Out in medical life is spending nights either in causality, observing CMO doling out his duties like expert traffic police, managing traffic, of patients here, in different directions, that is referring them to respective specialities, learning on the way the tricks of the trade or assisting, if you are lucky, if not, just attending a late-night obstructed hernia surgery because the patient waited too long at home to get it worsened.

Casualty full of whining patients is like war field and you get lot many chances to hone your skills on a busy night. Asthmatics with their audible wheeze teach you to grade the severity just by decibels of his wheeze while primipara abusing her husband( it’s a notion in lower classes that if you curse your husband during the labour, it’s smoother) does not teach you anything about in what stage of delivery she is, because earlier the stage, more the noise is the rule here. By the time she goes into third, she is too tired to make even the slightest sound!. By the sheer variety of the exposure to the humankind, you keep on falling in love again and again!
Pursuing a postgraduate degree as a Resident doctor is another high. You perform your so many firsts within this period of 3 years that by the time you are out you are on 7th heaven. Simple procedures like venesection, pleural tapping, Spinal tap put you on the threshold of something so big that even now it's difficult to envisage. So with every success, there has to be a party so you lose the boundaries on successfully carrying out Liver Biopsy a bit difficult one on the court! Every step towards a new bondage between you and your love!

By the time you are Doctor with a legitimate degree either the MBBS or MD, you are in the seventh heaven and ready to fall in love again because till now you were doing everything under the guidance of somebody senior but now you are on your own to practice what you have been taught. The very thought is so a turn on that you wait for your first patient with an abetted breath. And when you hear your first murmur, get it confirmed on 2 D echo and you turn out to be right, it’s yet an another date with your love, your profession, medicine!

I realized the intimacy and the passion of my love really when I was in the practice for 3 to 4 years, around the age of 32/33. This is where it becomes a smooth passage with your beloved all along the way. There are hits, there are misses, which you only know, just like your ongoing courtship with your love of life.

And then you retire. But luckily for us, there is no retirement really if you don’t want to. I got another chance in my old age to fall back in love again. Though I practised Medicine for 40 years, in the initial years we had only 2 USG centres in Mumbai in early the 80s. The entire system was being revitalized. By then CT scans followed by MRIs were on the line and there was a new horizon with setting sun to walk in. I was so happy to use all these modalities with no restrictions of any kind,( in Semi-Government …. You know what I mean) afresh that it gave me new vigour to forget the old bastions and get to learn to operate new equipment as a fresh intern. Kids of this generation know them like the back of their hands and so it was new love to mingle with them and learn a few things here and there. It’s said that you are a student all your life, especially if you are a professional, it’s so so true.

It was like having apprehensions exactly like when you are on your first date. And let me tell you I  fell in love again, my first love, my profession at this late age! It’s worth it!