Saturday 29 September 2012

As Paul Ehrlich said , “life is a....chemical incident”!! What I am sure of is I never wanted the description of my life to be easy , smooth ,fun  else why would i choose to become a doctor.
Medicine is all about handling failures....in all its forms!! You will be assigned more work than can be managed ,more to learn & read than probably can be remembered...enough is always less for us. It’s  emotionally and physically gruelling and no I am not complaining here. I, probably, only by now have a partial glimpse of my life ahead....tip of the iceberg and I won’t even call it a struggle. Struggle is what people do against their disease in hospital....rest everything is overrated! There are things that we are told and things we discover!As an intern when i was assisting my resident in suprapubic cystostomy ,he pulled me aside and said “Emotions are funny and weird, Keep them aside”. I now know emotions are neither funny nor weird,  expression is!! When I put my first suture I realized how precision with which a task is done so much more important than it’s mere completion. I know medicine to be either consuming or evading. There’s a midway, it’s just not for me!! As Sidney Farber said “for progress we don’t need full solutions of all the problems”.....I agree. For  progress, we need patience!!
At  the end of the day, you just have to compete with yourself, you could either be optimistic or delusional and There’s just one thing that can’t be cured...it’s impatience!!!

Saturday 8 September 2012

NARENDRA MODI AND THE HALF TRUTH


            It's been a while now…I used to either start my day with suryanamaskar or a cheese slice….but this morning in particular has been really lazy….all I needed was to catch up on some sleep…I don't exactly remember what I was thinking about when my roommate slammed the door and thrusted a mug of tea in my hands….she was muttering something, well I 'm blessed with selective hearing and vision loss early in the morning.
however it was in my best interest to pretend I was listening to her,I asked her to pass me
the newspaper….she hurled toothpaste towards me,"doc, it's all about coalgate…go brush"….i wish I had complied with the orders!!
I came across an article…what a bummer seriously….flip newschannels…go through newspapers....it really takes Indians a great deal of time to move on….kudos to our media
Talk about misrepresentation of facts, talk about bending the truth….talk about being selective in bringing facts to lights…oh wait facts,is it??media's recent brouhaha about Narendra modi's interview to WSJ…. In the concerned interview,Mr Modi also spoke about girl child education,upliftment of poor…which was very conveniently not reported….while you lodge this war of attrition against Mr Modi,
you are devoiding us of truth.And probably noone ever told you but  A half truth is no truth, you see unlike gossip truth follows an all or none law!!
But what really took me by surprise that while everyone jumped on to the conclusion of the chief minister being callous sinister and bla bla,even the self proclaimed genius saviors of our society failed to acknowledge the difference between malnutrition and low birth weight or underweight…..malnutrition is just one of the cause of LBW!!
As a doctor I understand the importance of nutrition during the nine months,it plays a vital role in determining the birth weight of the baby…but overall health of mother is equally important!!
let's look at it this way…..we have been always told that the performance on the day of the exam is really important for delivering good result but can we ignore the preparation that we need to do for an exam which will affect the performance on the day of exam…likewise pregnancy is an exam,it's a responsibility!!
You need to prepare yourself for it….emotionally mentally but most important physically….Nutrition is always prophylaxis ..it can never be the treatment!!
And anorexia has really become rampant in our society….girls in early 20's do diet excessively…and certain losses can never be covered up for!!!That is also the reason why a 19 or a 20 yr old girl always deliver a LBW baby….it's important to note that nutrition has an additive effect!!a malnourished mother cannot usually cover up for the lost nutrition and can never deliver a healthy baby!!this underweight baby contracts infection like pneumonia which takes a toll on it's already dwindling health and it indirectly adds to our screwed up stats!!
this brings me to question that why do we always talk about problems,are busy in dissecting statements…..what about the solution….LBW has plagued India!
we have been talking about the conflicts,its time we let truth prevail…..it's time we talk about the cause!!
Debates only form opinions….it's the best way to hoodwink the society while doing absolutely nothing about the problem!!most of the media reports are based on these opinion!!
As and when such reports flummox us…here's a thing
opinion resides in everyone's mind but truth ,it's always lurking in our hearts!!