Pep talk for the coming year.

Alright, so my internship is almost ending and the need to start preparing for entrance exams has never been more necessary. It's going to be a tough, gruelling journey with the books, papers, multiple choice questions and exams for the next year.

But I got to keep my morale up. Got to keep the engine going. Life is a marathon and this stretch is just one part that's a little difficult. Got to keep powering through to keep the dream alive. That dream can't die. To make dreams come true, it is never enough to wish for them. To make dreams come true, it requires a LOT of work and dedication to it.

2016 is not going to be easy, but it's going to be worth it. So stay strong, stay up beat, stay focused, stay on schedule with studying and stay committed to the cause. No one else is fighting for your dream except you. Keep strong and positive, and you can achieve what you want.

Go Priya!

The Dr. (to be) has become the Dr.

Yes, dreams do come true. All it needs is the following:

• Plan purposefully 
• Prepare prayerfully
• Proceed positively 
• Pursue persistently

OK,  I admit to have taken this from a quote by William A. Ward, but it is the truth. Had I not been persistent for years about what I wanted to do,  I wouldn't have done anything to get it.

Now that I have become Dr. Priya, the goals have become more ambitious, and I aim to achieve those as well. To become a surgeon, specifically a paediatric surgeon has been a dream for the last seven or eight years. Now the time to put in the hard work meant to achieve it begins. I hope to pursue this field with the utmost dedication, strength and durability that I can muster to endure the challenges that come along with becoming a female surgeon. 

Bucket list 2.0

I have written a post about bucket lists before, but the reason I am revising it is probably because I am in a relatively morbid place for a reason that I am yet to figure out.
My updated bucket list:

• Top 5 musicians I want to see in concert:   

1. A.R.Rahman
2. Coldplay
3. Yanni
4. Ludovico Einaudi
5. Vishakha Hari

• Visit Greece again (preferably for honeymoon 😜)
• Work in Paris-live in an adjacent apartment to my best friend of ~16 years now
• Visit New York
• Tour an European City in the middle of the night with a special person (inspired by 'Before Sunrise')
• Bungee jump
• Skydive
• Look good in a dress
• Have a south Indian brahmin wedding
• Spend a white Christmas
• Get drunk once
• Party at a Guetta concert
• Visit the Taj Mahal
• Walk Hadrian's wall
• Watch a meteor shower
• Watch the northern lights
• Scuba diving
• Have a house, where one entire wall is filled with shelves of books
• Vacation in Maldives/Mauritius
• Get a puppy
• (To be entered)

So long, farewell...

For all those who grew up watching 'A Sound of Music', the song is one that is familiar to them.
There may be so many different ways to say 'goodbye', but saying it to someone who is dear to you is quite tough.
It's not that it is a new concept to me; I have said many 'goodbyes' before, but I guess there was always the assurance that it was temporary, and that we would meet again one day.
In about three weeks, I will have to utter those dreaded two syllables yet again. It's not something that was out of the blue, it has been coming for a while, and yet, I find myself breaking down multiple times because of that thought.
Said recipient of a farewell is someone who I met close to four years ago now, on a hot April evening at a fest at my college. It happened to be a spontaneous meeting, without anyone introducing one to the other. With exams just a week away, and really just looking for an excuse to leave my room and de-stress, I volunteered to help set up a stall that our community was in charge of. I had been helping with the preparations that week, and one of the very few (at the time) first year students to as well; some seniors can be quite intimidating! :P
I was pinning up decorations to the stall, when I heard someone say 'So you're Priya?'
I responded, with an astonished look,'yes, and you are?'
He smiled and replied,' I have heard a lot about you! I am K, nice to meet you! I'm two years senior to you, and my batchmates have told me that you have helped out a lot. Thank you!'
I had asked him to help me pin up some more stuff onto the stall, all the while conversing with each other (I can't really remember what we talked about), before I ran back to the room to change into a more traditional outfit (the theme of the fest demanded it of me, really :P). When I got back, he was in a veshti, and I wore the traditional dhavani or half-sari, commonly seen in Tamil Nadu. By the time the fest was in full swing, most of my friends had left, and I was roaming about, looking quite lost and not really knowing people around me. I went back to our stall, and he was there. He struck up a conversation with me, that went on for hours. We helped take down the stall at the end of the night, and he helped me take back some of the decorations back to my room. To be very honest, it was one of the very few times that I have ever been that comfortable talking to someone I had just met. To the best of my knowledge, whenever that happened, the next time I met the same person, conversation would never be the same, or we just wouldn't talk.
I didn't meet him again after that night, at least until my first year was over. It was a stressful two months, filled with exams, and not knowing if I was capable of passing the first hurdle that medschool threw at me, and so I didn't really give a second thought about that one April night.
This is where social media came in and twisted the story :P.
I ended up finding him on Facebook, and then he struck up a conversation with me once I had started my second year. And the rest, as they say, is his story :P (There are at least two versions of the same story, so I am quite curious to hear his perspective of it anyway :P )
He has become one of the very few people I trust, and a great friend. I wish I didn't have to say goodbye to him. He leaves this collegetown to study and take greater leaps in his career, and I am really happy that he is moving forward. Maybe I wish that I was moving forward with him? Or that there is some reassurance that I will meet him again one day?
I know for a fact that thanks to modern mobile technology, we will be in touch, for as long as we can, but I will still wish to see his lanky frame lurking about the hospital or library, hear the random poor jokes that he would crack whenever we met up, listen to his thoughts on current political situations and just knowing that he is nearby, which oddly enough is reassuring enough, to help me get through stressful times.
He has made me the editor of a book he plans to write sometime in the next 3-4 decades, I have made him promise to send me an audio clip when he learns to play the violin, and I know that one day, his kids will be a lot like him, and will tail him like little ducklings.
But we don't always know what tomorrow brings, so I just hope I have the strength to take it one day at a time.
K, I will miss you incredibly, and I pray that you work hard and strive to achieve your dream. The next year is a gruelling one, but I have faith that you will get what you have wanted for so long. I wish I was there every step of the way, but I suppose something is better than nothing.
This place won't be the same without you, and as I enter the toughest stretch of my medical career so far, I will miss you more. Your random quizzing, which may annoy me but help me learn and remember that concept better, advice on how to go about studying and reassurance that it will all be ok were what got me through the last few years. I hope that it will still continue, despite the distance.
So long.. Farewell.. Auf Wiedersehen.. Goodbye.. Until we meet again. :)

'My life flashed before my eyes'

It is a statement one hears from someone who has undergone a traumatic, near death experience, or when one is afraid to hear a death sentence approaching them. It is a statement I heard recently and I could not help but wonder what I would see. Not that I wish that something that scary would happen to me, but I wonder, at that moment, what my mind chooses to focus on in that tiny time span: The moments that I think are important? The people I love? The places I cherish? If it does choose one of them, would they coincide with the moments I consider important? Would the list of people remain the same, or would there be a smaller list? What are the places that my mind would want to revisit, in that second?

After that moment, does one reflect on it, and change how they have lived life until that second? Do they choose to be more lively, stand to smell the flowers for a little longer, keep food in their mouths a little longer, and savour each and every moment as it passes by, or do they pick and choose, the moments that they choose to appreciate more, spend more time with those they saw in that fraction of a second, and revisit all those places that they saw?

I am not sure how I would react if, God forbid, something like that happened to me. I have grown to appreciate my family and friends more, now that I live away from most of them, and with those that I do live around, I try to spend as much time with them as I can, for who knows what tomorrow will bring. The best I can do, is to pray that everyone that I love remains strong, healthy and happy for a very long time. I pray that none of them will have to see their life whoosh by in front of them for a long, long time. 

Milestones

There are the milestones that we have to learn in paediatrics (haven't had my classes for that yet, but have been informed on what to look forward to), and there are the milestones we all know about. The latter set of milestones are arbitrary points in life, with no specific landmark in time, that indicate how far we have come, the things we have accomplished, how well we maintain relationships and whether we have changed for better or for worse.

These milestones include schooling, graduating from college, getting a good job, getting married, having children, leading a stable family life, giving the children a stable and caring environment, providing them with a good base for a stable future, retirement, grandchildren, the list keeps going. Ordinarily, these milestones seem easy to accomplish, and why worry that they won't?

But when I think about it, there are so many things that can go wrong on this path, and any detour can lead to a loss of confidence or a stigma is associated with it. Graduating from college may be delayed due to shortage of credits. Obtaining a job may not happen as soon as one would like. One may find the love of their life, but cannot get married, or they get divorced. Infertility issues or the loss of a child can affect a couple's lives. Continuous migration or instability of jobs and finances create less opportunities for a stable growing environment for children. Retirement may not occur in certain fields, due to the invaluable experience of the older workers (medicine is such a field). Will one live to see their grandchildren? Will one stay in touch with their children to get to know their grandchildren?

We all blindly believe that these are the things that are guaranteed to happen in our life. Granted, we even try to plan out when exactly each milestone should take place, but how sure are we that each and every event we plan out, works in our favour?

I guess it is when one hears about events like those that I have mentioned, they strive to not get into the same position. They work hard to stay true to the path they have set for themselves, and despite the turns that lie ahead, they hope that in the end, they achieve what they have always wanted.

"Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Communication skills

2012 didn't end on December 21st, as the myth went about. For me, it ended with decent results to one of the longest exam seasons to date.('Don't get ahead of yourself! Final year awaits!', as one of my best friends who has completed the final year, and will soon be a medical intern would say.) I spent the last few days of 2012 with my family and a few friends back home. Three weeks at home went by a lot quicker than three weeks of exams. We got to see the newly developed aspect of the city that I love and cherish. On New Year's Eve, the family and I spent it with friends that I have known for three-fourths of my life. Although we've known each other for so long, there are still things I have learnt about them recently.

My anticipation to go back home was what got me through the gruelling exam period. I had hoped that it would always remain the same, the way things were at home, the childishness that I possess would remain the same, because home is where I grew up, and I could remain a child forever. But, home isn't Neverland. We all grow up, and scarily, we all grow old.

Our classes and clinical postings have taught us that as one ages, there are a variety of diseases that one is predisposed to. The lifestyle one lives, their genetic makeup, risk factors that are hidden in the delicious meals they eat each day all possess a risk in contracting diseases that can cause so much harm to someone and their family indirectly.

The hard part about going back home for a medical student, in my opinion, is learning about the health issues that family members, both in the immediate and distant family. I was visiting relatives before I went back home, and because of my chosen field, my relatives started discussing their symptoms, the medications they were on, their lab reports that they kept in files were shown to me for interpretation and all throughout, I kept thinking about the complications of the diseases, the adverse effects of their medications, and fearing that some of these things that I had listed out in my head would happen to them. Apart from hearing about the illnesses my relatives have from themselves, it is a lot harder to hear the exact details why a relative died while in the hospital from his son.

Six months ago, a relative of mine (it's a lot easier to call him that, because explaining the relationship I had with him is going to take a while) went for a normal check up, and was told that his coronaries were blocked. A Coronary Artery Bypass Graft procedure was called for (CABG in medic language). His son was told that the risk of him not making it through the procedure was 5%. He was kept under observation in the ICU for a few days, and was slowly recuperating. He was in his senses and responded well to the people around him. He was also a diabetic, and because of that, he was prone to gangrene at the peripheries. He developed gangrene on his toe, and was kept in the ICU for a longer time. During his ICU stay, they had performed a tracheostomy, because he was conscious. He developed Pseudomonas pneumonia. They had started him on powerful antibiotics, to no avail. He was struggling until 2.08 A.M, August 1st, after which he slowly started to deteriorate. He passed away at 8 A.M, August 1st.

He was one of the very few people who were genuinely happy that I got into medical school. He was very enthusiastic about education and medical care. Although he was a lecturer at a polytechnic college, he was well aware about other fields. It broke my heart to hear that he passed away with so much suffering.

When this story was recounted in front of the family, they blamed the hospital for not treating their patients properly, when the reality is that Pseudomonas is an acquired infection from hospitals and very resistant to treatment. I then realised that there was a communication gap between doctors and the patient party.

I aim to help bridge the gap that has formed between healthcare providers and their recipients, and it all starts by explaining what exactly they are going through. I have begun to reach that goal by explaining what my family are or were going through, and though it may be time consuming to actually explain in detail the conditions they face, they become more aware, and their family members do not have any misconceptions.

I hope that in the future, I can help bridge this divide on a larger scale, as it is the cause for many preconceived notions about the work that we do in this field and the prejudices many people have about doctors and why lab investigation and treatment costs are increasing. It helps to bring about more information to those that are suffering from diseases that can be dealt with, by adapting a slightly different lifestyle. I will work hard to communicate more with my patients and explain what exactly we are doing to help them get better in time.