Yeterday was one off those days in my life as a doctor that shows the varied aspects of living a life of a doctor here in rural india....
The day started of with me reaching late at the Primary Healh Care Facility at Deoli....there were lots of expecting mothers there for me to sign off their referrals to the central hospital...after having signed them off i sat in the office and started my OPD...the first few patients were the usual upper respiratory tract infections and diarrhoeas...we as interns get real anxious to see a small child walking towards us as we have very limited knowledge of the drug dosages to prescribe to small children.
Then there was the first bad incident of the day...some patients are really pain in the ass...that patient was a known case of hypertension and diabetes...his BP a day before was recorded as 140/90 mm hg and then the smart guy not satisfied with the high bp went to a local quack who said there is no BP problem prescribed some sedatives and sent him off....so this guy comes today delibrately not taking his BP pills...jus to prove me wrong and create a tussle at the PHC..
i vented all my anger to the asshole and shot him from the office.....
Rest of the day passed off peacefullly..with around 60 patients seen..i was somewhat tired and went to catch up some sleep as i had the night duty also...my co-intern took my place in the office....
Around 6 pm all the other interns left and i was to remain at the PHC for the night emergency duty....
and then when it all started!!!!!
Rains unleashed upon us like angered clouds as we were left helpless....electricity went off, not to return for next 12 hours....there was acute shortage of diesel so we could not fire up the genertor....candles were light as we waited for the Gods to intervene...
The patients started to pour in too...the rains were taking its toll..
there were a couple of accidents which required suturing....a candle light suturing was done to best of my abilities of working in the darkness....
There was a patient of acute abdomen who came at around 11 pm...the poor guy probably had a koch's abdomen but we being at a PHC couldnt use any investigations..(For my readers of developed countries...we dont have even a Total Leucocyte count here in a PHC, no lab, no Sonography, No xray...its purely clinical diagnosis that we work on!!)...the patient just had 100 rs with him( around 2 dollars)......we asked his relatives to shift him to the central hospital immediately but they couldnt afford the transport and our own ambulance had already gone to shift an accident patient to the central hospital...
he didnt have any money for medications...we managed to start some hydration and also gave him analgesic injections...but he just lay there waiting for death to intervene....he was a farmer by occupation, had taken loan on interest and simply had no money....Slowly he too withered into darkness in front of my eyes.....my own frustation was that i personally had brought just some 50 rs for the night......
there were few more patients as the night and the rains continued....
I managed some sleep around 2 am....
i got up around 6 am and went to the local bus stand for a ride back home.
Seeing me with a stethoscope dangling around my neck...a local private bus operater offered me a complimentry ride back to my hostel sayin " Doctor Saheb...kal raat apne bahut mehnat ki...and so on..."....i found out he was one of the patienst i had seen yesterday night that i have sutured in darkness....
Life turns a full circle in matter of a day...its so varied in its approach that some times even Gods dot know what to expect.....
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