Stories From The Ward I

I'm planning to add this as a weekly feature to share the tales from my professional life. I hope you will enjoy them too.

1st chest examination: This was the check-up for the respiratory system. It wasn't a problem, given that the team was co-operative & the patient was a lean male.(its difficult with the fat). But the trouble was that it was a male. It wouldn't have occured to me how my hands felt until the people I pracitised on told me that I had a light touch. Got the story? So it happened that while I was 'supposed' to be doing the superficial check(which was plainly feeling the entire chest with the palm) a 'crisp grasp' came from the patient. Everyone heard but all pretended innocence. I wasn't sure about continuing but did anyways-something else.That was the last time I ever checked the chest: I opted for the stomach instead :)

Paralysed Patients You might feel sorry for the stiffened patients being wheeled in but don't fall for it. They have amazing stories to tell. A couple of days back this middle-aged woman was brought in the medicine ward. Her attendants felt sorry for her that she couldn't even talk nor move her stiff limbs . The compassionate doctor went to examine her. He took his hammer & checked her reflexes to find that they were all present(in paralysis they're absent). He kept his calm & simply told the nurse to pass a tube down her nose into the stomach(Nasogastric tube which is painful)himself going into the other room. Within a few minutes he heard her scream...miracle doctor wasn't he! :D Alot of patients just fake for seeking attention & these kind of stories are not uncommon. We enjoyed the experience nevertheless.

The Long standing Question

There is usually a thought in every person's mind whether expressed or not about their existence. For some it's there as adolescents & then somehow getting into the grinding of the daily chores they forget to question things.

There are those such as I, who since the last 15years have been trying to find the meaning of life. Born with a silver spoon in the mouth, good family, great friends, good education, ample oppurtunities to grow and discover various things in life,I am as clueless as I was 20years ago. I've dug up religion. I've delved into the psyche of the human minds & read a great many books on philisophy but never to recieve an answer to the question.

People claim to have found their way. We aren't in the position to be skeptical. They are those who have found a passion or if nothing else 'contentment' in their lives.

I wasn't given the oppurtunity to live to do what my neighbor's doing or even what my brother or mother wanted to. The whole idea is that we all were created for a different purpose. Some people are there to serve others & some are there to be served. It's the way Nature has created us. It wasn't to us to question 'why humans eat the chicken & the chicken don't eat humans?' Somethings just "are".

Somethings that 'are' for some are just not for others. As the saying goes "one man's spinach is another man's poison". This makes it harder for each of us to open a different goody bag & make sense of it.

The 'meaning of life' doesn't span contentment. It's just that contentment is a playing factor in it. I talk in broad terms.

"why was life created?" The older I get the more worthless things appear. It seems that there is very little to do. Everywhere its the same thing & it surmounts to nothing valuable. I don't know what people chase. Perhaps to the man on the street, money will be of the greatest importance & to the woman without children, having a child would make life worthwhile. Aren't these materialistic things? Haven't all the religions taught to rise above them? These are the things we can't live without or have to do without but its just that "there's gotta be more to life!" Career, family, money & love can't be the beginning and the end, or are they?