Making lives easier

I was held up at work and missed all of you. It is said, never ruin an apology with an excuse. So no regrets or apologies. But I will sure catch up with you.

When an individual becomes sick, a doctor is who they go to in order to seek treatment or get advice. But nurses play an equally important role in a patient’s care and recovery. When trying to separate the two jobs, a doctor is the one who does the examining and diagnosing, while the nurse has a “more hands-on role with physically treating a patient”. Do the two jobs intertwine? Absolutely, and that is why many nurses feel that on certain occasions they may have more insight into a patient’s case.

I had always seen  the hospital work as a simple routine and failed to recognise or acknowledge the kind of service offered by the nursing staff and the sacrifices they make.Everything was taken for granted.I havent paused for a minute to look at them with thankfullness and gratitude.I am glad that this event prompted me to do that.

Ahmed (Not his real name) has been with us in the medical ward for more than 18 months. He has turned 16 years now.From childhood, he has been suffering from a crippling illness called muscular dystrophy. At school, he started falling down repeatedly during games, and then had difficulty to get up from squatting position .He had been taken to many hospitals in and outside here, and was finally labeled with this diagnosis.There is a diagnosis, but no treatment. And there is nothing which stops its progression to crippling and death. This is the paradox in neurology. There is lot of scope for hair splitting academic discussions, but when it comes to treatment, often there is nothing much to offer. Our nerve cells do not have the capacity to regenerate, or if at all they do, they do it at a snail’s pace. And also we do not have an idea as to how and why many of these diseases develop.

He had been confined to a bed for few years now, and then the worst part of his illness took over. When the muscles to breathe got involved, he became unable to breathe by himself. After many attempts of non invasive ventilator support, finally he had to undergo a tracheotomy and then connected to a ventilator.

He is unable to move. His muscles are wasted. The only parts which move are his fingers and the face muscles. He is fond of soccer matches, and so we have managed to get a television for him and given him a remote control by which he can choose his favorite games .He has no voice, but can move his lips. His face muscles are intact so he can express. He has to be fed, cleaned and given all the daily care by the nursing staff. His world has shrunken to the hospital bed. The ward is his home and he is a part of the family there.

We start our morning rounds in the medical ward by visiting him. I stay for some time and try to entertain him with some silly questions and jokes. He always welcomes me with a smile. Through the middle of his tears, he has learned to smile. He likes to have someone around him, but hardly gets any visitor,except his parents.

I walked in to his room last Sunday as usual, but was in for a surprise. The room looked bright and colorful.  A big banner stretched from one end to the other. Written “Happy Birthday, Ahmed ”. Balloons floated everywhere. Ahmed was dressed in a color shirt which one of the nurses had brought for him. Beside him, on a table was a beautifully decorated cake. Soon after I entered the room, all the nurses and cleaning staff walked in and started singing “happy birthday’. Ahmed was all smile and cheer. While we made him cut the cake, a big bouquet of flowers was brought in, sent in by the Matron (She is very fond of him too).The celebration was short and sweet, and I know it has filled his day with memories he would cherish for the rest of his life.

I felt so happy that those nurses had the goodness in them to remember his birthday and make a day for him. These are acts of kindness that make them truly human and earn them the names  ’ nurses’ ‘sisters’ ‘angels’ and nightingales ’. Their routine is not an easy one and their work so demanding.

Wounds need to be dressed, patients need to be fed, reports for the hospital must be filled out, and medical records must be documented for continuity of care, and prevent the ever present fear of litigation. The doctor is here and wants to see the patient with her and asks how they're doing. He writes some orders that they must document, then carry out and then finally document them again.

Patients need to be walked, tracheotomies need to be cared for, the patient in 19B is complaining of  pain, IVs need to be started and some restarted, and the next shift nurse has called in sick ,so someone has to work 12 hours today. There is going to be a transfer of a patient to Abu Dhabi and another nurse who is off duty has to be called in. The patient in 22 B has passed stools and soiled his bed and had to be cleaned immediately because his son has come to visit him and can’t stand the odor.

It goes on and on with endless telephone calls and constant moving around. It is said that a nurse walks around an average of 8 KMs during her 8 hour shift .At the end, everyone complains, and very few say at least a word of thanks. 

Seldom are they remembered after people walk out of hospitals. No one thinks for a minute that they would seldom do the task of carrying the feces and urine of even the closest of their relatives. How many would dare to clean their own relative who has soiled his bed and is bathed in urine, leave alone putting their fingers in to the rectum to remove the impacted feces.

 Many patients do not feel the need to tell nurses thanks, but telling them that you appreciate them would add a little more meaning to their lives. After hearing curses all day, it is so nice to have somebody come back and show their appreciation. Never mind the last eight hours have been spent without food or water as you run like a chicken with your head cut off,  trying to keep people alive and out of pain. This profession is for stronger minded people, with high coping skills, and definitely a sense that we do not live in a perfect world, and therefore you cannot expect perfection, you can only do your best to try to give good care. It occurs to me that there will eventually be no one who will become nurses except those who have no choice like life term prisoners. The stress is unbelievable, the rewards few, the perks even less. 

It is an unusual profession, it is a calling.

Doctor ! You are sick !!

I was taken ill last week. It started as a simple cough and cold, and soon, I lost my voice. When I tried to speak, only a hiss would come out. The difficult part was that I was not looking badly ill. I used to fresh up every day and would go to hospital. For few days, I managed by giving written down instructions to the staff and avoided the outpatient clinics .In between, paroxysms of cough would come and who ever happens to see me would ask

“Doctor ! You are sick !!”

When I failed to attend the clinic for few days some patients started complaining .Worse, when they happen to meet me at the wards, they would think I was faking illness and avoiding the clinics. The best thing would have been to call in sick and take leave, but then, that would bring further resentment among colleagues, who have to put up with the extra work. Personal days and sick days are frowned upon in the physician world, yet daily I am writing work and school notes for patients. I sit in the clinic giving sick leave for those who come to me with pharyngitis , and asking them to give ‘voice rest’, all the while, talking to them  in my husky voice. Physicians are expected to be superhuman. In the last fifteen years, I have never called in sick, not that I had not been sick. There were many times I continued working at the hospital with the troubling pains of kidney stones, which is a constant companion these days.

It was interesting to see how people look at us when we fall sick.

It may be hard to believe, but we get health problems too, like anyone else out there.

I see this odd view surprisingly often. People somehow expect us to be beyond the health concerns of ordinary people. We may be doctors, but we’re also humans. Prone to the same illnesses, bad luck, and erroneous judgments the rest of mortals are. Being a doctor doesn’t protect you from the things that affect others. The chances are that we might catch infections more often than others, because of the frequent exposure to illnesses.

I also learned something. For a person who is sick, his own sickness is the worst. If the nose is blocked, the nose becomes the most important organ. If a leg is injured, that is the worst situation possible. We forget those with heart attacks or cancers.

On the flip side, sometimes we’re surprised when something serious happens to us. At times, there seems to be an unspoken belief that by devoting ourselves to caring for others, it should magically protect us from those same diseases we fight. I wish if it were so.

If anything, the high stress nature of our work makes us more likely to have bad things happen. We often ignore our own issues because of the time needed to care for others. Most of us live sleep deprived, stressed up lives, and survive on food that we’d never advise others to take. When I come back from the hospital, it has become almost a routine for me to pick up a sandwich from Burger King or Mc Donald. That is exactly what I ask them not to do.

I get angry at patients for not exercising, or a poor diet, or forgetting to pick up their prescriptions. I call them ‘non compliant’!  But I do the same stuff as much as, if not more often, than they do. After a long day at the clinic and tiring hospital rounds, and dealing with un ending problems at home, when do I have time to do my exercise, pick up my aspirin and get something decent for dinner?. And hope that over the weekend I’ll find time to exercise. Or get up earlier in the morning and go for jogging. It never happens.

An apology

A doctor’s world is very small. Before I became a doctor, I could go around anywhere, meet relatives and stay with them, travel or just do whatever I wanted. I had time and people.


It is almost 25 years since I started practice. Ever since, life has been different. My world was shrinking. It became smaller and smaller. My life was full of patients and colleagues and nothing else. With no time left , there is almost no social interaction. There are only those who come to us for pain and suffering. No one ever has walked in to my clinic to say a simple hello. Never, even those who got better.

It is not surprising, that the world, for me has become so small. Naturally, life become full of stories related to patients or colleagues. I had tried to avoid many personal details in my blogging, except on one occasion. That was when I mentioned a colleague of mine. But, with all sincerity, I can still say, like I had written, that he is probably one I still respect as a good physician among colleagues. I had clearly written that he had set examples for me in life and career .I had mentally accepted him as a teacher and secretly admired him. The only mistake was that I mentioned the use of some words by him. With so much of good things said, I thought this was nothing important and I had also clearly mentioned that he didn’t mean anything bad about those words .Still, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.

I learned another lesson from him now and I will not forget it too. From deep within my heart, I am begging him to forgive me, if I have hurt him in any way by my words.

In my entire career, I never tried to butter up people to get things done. Naturally I might not be called very friendly with senior colleagues. Along with such friendships come many obligations.

The most important thing for a physician is his professional reputation. And the best judge to know his capabilities are his colleagues. Every doctor thinks so high of himself. It is very unusual to hear good things about a doctor from another one.

“He is such a kind hearted doctor. He is so good to patients and talks so well, but he doesn’t know medicine. I hear all his patients die”

“Oh…him! He is a very tough guy. He is said to be rude and arrogant. But people are crowding because he is very good professionally. They say he is the best around”

It is hard to get a perfect combination. Given an option, I would like to hear the second.

In life, there is no perfect situation. No perfect person too.

A love story

It was the warmest campus story those days. He was handsome and always wore a beard, perfectly trimmed and we used to call him ‘the zodiac man”. There was an advertisement of the zodiac apparels, featuring a handsome bearded man, and he looked similar. No wonder so many girls were after him. He belonged to a lower caste, which was the only difference. Annie was the best student in her batch and they had met during their clinical rotations. Soon, it became the sensational romance of the campus. They were often seen together, at the coffee house, at the garden in front of the college, which would be deserted by evenings, and always at the hospital wards. At evenings only the lovers used to go to the darkened corners of the garden. "Lover's corner", we used to say. And the campus was so full of lovers those days.


Her parents were senior professors in Medical College. Because they were working in another college, it took some time for them to gather the news. By the time they knew, the lovers were inseparable. Her father was so unpopular among students because of his tough and arrogant attitude to students. He was equally tough with his children. He tried all his tactics with the girl and everything failed. And one fine morning, the campus was thrilled to hear the news that the lovers got the marriage registered in a court.

Her father simply sent her out of his home. He refused to accept Kumar as his son in law and had no hesitation to say that on his face. He publicly declared that she was no longer his daughter. Annie was my good friend and would confide in me with all her problems. She would tell me, Kumar could not take all problems as he was very sensitive.

Both of them were good at studies and completed their course and got direct admission to the PG classes. The professor tried to harass them at every opportunity, especially during exams, by using his influence among the faculty.

They survived all the ordeals and remained inseparable. Everyone knew Kumar was obsessed with her and would never leave her for a minute. It was as if he had nothing else in his life. She was everything for him. Both joined the teaching faculty after studies. Somewhere along the time, they had a son and then, I lost touch of them. We were working in different parts of the world.

It was after ten years that I got a call from Annie. She got the number from my wife and called me when I was in Dubai.

I guessed something must be wrong, from the time I got her call. Her voice was dull and she was no more the talkative and cheerful Annie. She said she wanted to come to Dubai, and wanted me to find a job for her. I asked about Kumar and she was not very enthusiastic. By the time I got her papers, she already had received an offer of employment from the ministry. It looked as if she was frantically trying to come out.

She would come to visit me when she was not on call and slowly I got her story in bits and pieces. She said she could no longer live with Kumar, even when it came to losing custody of her child. Reasons were simple. He was suffocating her with his love. She couldn’t go out anywhere, or spend time with some friends and was answerable to each and everything. There was no breathing space. It was embarrassing to see him waiting outside if she would be attending some conferences or meetings. He would even take time from work and come out, as if she were a child. She just wanted to breathe free. In her words “to live normal”

I just couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. Too much love and attention! That was the first time I was hearing such a story. I didn’t ask her anything more and just listened to what all she said. I expected some more stories, but nothing came out. I honestly do not know if there was something more to it.

Once when we were sitting at the edge of a pool at Safa Park, she filled the palm of her hand with some water and held it before me. “You see this water carefully contained on my hand? It symbolizes Love. As long as you keep your hand gently open and allow it to remain there, it will always be there. If you attempt to close your fingers round it and try to posses it, it will spill through the first cracks it finds”

That was a  statement I would never forget. This is the greatest mistake that people do when they meet love. They try to posses, own, demand, and expect… and just like the water spilling out of your hand, love will retrieve from you. For love is meant to be free, you cannot change its nature. If there are people you love, allow them to be free beings. Even the greatest of love would become boring, if there is nothing else in the background.

Love is a bumpy road.

I have seen relationships collapse due to a possessiveness overdrive and power struggle. Well, we can never reason out our actions in relationships, but awareness always helps in defining our perspective. Love, like joy and cheer is meant to be shared and isn’t limited, like a piece of cake or candy. Still, we feel as if we own the person and haggle for our share, how strange!



http://buimuse.com/EnglishPoems.html







My God. Einstein's too

When arguments go around on matters of faith and religion, I often think

"Where do I stand?

There are times in my life when I have painfully called out to God. That call came from deep within; based on the hopes He had promised all of us. But, were all those prayers answered? I have often wondered, if you believe in a God who knows everything and watches over everything, is there a need to ask for anything? If a hair cannot fall without His knowledge, is there a point in asking Him, when we ourselves fall totally?


I was born in to a Catholic family and brought up as one. My house was next to the Cathedral and I grew up playing in the church compound, listening to the prayer bells, and the routine of evening prayers and Sunday masses. My world was too small.
To those of my friends who argue about religion, there is a question I always ask.
"Do you believe in God?"
If the answer is yes, I tell them "That is good enough, because there are others out there who do not believe"
"If you believe in God, have you a personal God?"
If He is a God in my list of harmless Gods, I would tell them
"That is wonderful. Because it is better than learning to hate others around who do not believe in your religion"
To those who say they cannot believe in something they haven’t seen, I would say


"Have you seen love? But haven’t you felt that sublime emotion which transcends all feelings and make you feel you cannot live without it ?. God is the same way"


"Have you chosen this religion yourself?"
"If not, then what right have you got to criticize other religions? Do you know what is written in their books or what they believe in?"


My understanding of the Hindu faith changed fundamentally after I started discussing religion with my friend Dr.Anand Kumar, who is a neurologist. I respect him as a fellow doctor and admire his knowledge and skills. He gave me explanations for many of the principles guiding the religion, which I could accept on the basis of simple logic. I could also come to terms with many other faiths the same way.


How many of us have put in some effort to read and understand other religions, before landing on one, rather than sitting in comfort and arguing' Mine is the true one"


I would respect a religion if it teaches you good practices. If it teaches you to love and serve fellow human beings. Not to hurt human and animals alike. I simply cannot respect  religions which would advise you to take the life of someone, for whatever reasons.


Faith or religion is some kind of priming. Sometime back, we had few Chinese nurses working in our hospital. I used to ask them about life in China, and was surprised to see that many of them haven’t heard of God. If they haven’t heard of God, how can they believe in one? They don’t have to pray to God for their needs, or when they are in suffering. They were simply not used to it. They were used to living without a God.


I have also thought "If science does not go along with God, how is it that many of our scientists were believers? From Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and Faraday to Einstein, we see that many of our greatest scientists believed in God. Their brains were most probably not inferior to ours in any way.


Einstein is probably the best known and most highly revered scientist of the twentieth century, and is associated with major revolutions in our thinking. Although never coming to belief in a personal God, he recognized the impossibility of a non-created universe.


The Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists." This actually motivated his interest in science, as he once remarked to a young physicist: "I want to know how God created this world; I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."


Einstein's famous epithet on the "uncertainty principle" was "God does not play dice" - and to him this was a real statement about a God in whom he believed. A famous saying of his was "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."


"Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntary and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore. In our daily lives we only feel that man is here for the sake of others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own." ... "The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavors in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is."
Einstein's speech 'My Credo' to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin.


As he famously declared: “A spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe …a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort.”


When asked directly if he believed in God, he always insisted he did, and explained it once this way: “We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.”


"Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just, and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also, by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, if this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?"

"My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance-but for us, not for God".


"The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God". Einstein’s address at Princeton Theological Seminary.


My God and his are the same.