The Heart of The Matter

So, my father had a heart scare yesterday. It would be an over exaggeration on my part if I called it a heart scare, it was just my overthinking brain making a mountain of a molehill. Probably. I mean I hope so.

He felt dizzy before lunchtime, had food and felt better after. That’s it. That is all that happened. After almost a decade in the medical field, I am sure my brain could think of a myriad reasons for dizziness. And as a medical student and now a postgraduate doing my residency in a government hospital, I have lost count of the number of times I have felt dizzy myself and fallen, over a skipped meal, a late night or a bad hangover.

And yet, when it comes to daddy dearest, even the thought of anything being wrong with him, brings my heart to a screeching halt. I see age catching up with him, in the wrinkles around his eyes, in the lines on his forehead, the silver in his last few strands of hair, in the slowness of his actions. The doctor brain in me understands that, this means health scares will slowly, unknowingly become a routine in our lives, making the occassional doctor visits an annual tradition, with a growing prescription list.

But the daughter heart in me refuses to see her father anything less than the superhero who would take her to the park everyday after office, or the guy who’d always be up for a late night drive to make his sulky teenage daughter’s mood better.

Suddenly Dr. Asthana’s line from Munna bhai M.B.B.S becomes very, very real “Agar meri beti pe operation karna hota toh mere haath kapte.”

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Maybe that’s why the 7^th bed Ajji, a case of cellulitis who is currently having an MI, is just that. And the 4^th bed boy who was doing so well until now, but is suddenly deteriorating, is just another 17 year old with rotten luck. And the 6^th bed Ajja who I know will not make it to the next hour, doesn’t get my attention when my ICU gets busy.

Not a day goes by when I don’t see a stranger cry. I used to wonder if my residency has made my heart grow cold, turned me into a well oiled machine that very efficiently spits out very well rehearsed lines of “We’re doing our best” “I’m so sorry for your loss”.

 But it is on the contrary I’ve realized, a skill I have come to learn. To work like robots, mechanically, empathetically. It is just easier that way, isnt, it?

Because imagine having my heart shattered into a million pieces knowing Fakkiravva ajji cannot afford a simple antibiotic for her cellulitits, or Jaffar the 17 year old, who lost his mother in the tragic accident that left him with a diffuse axonal injury, and Suresh ajja who cannot ,maintain his BP with dual maximum strength ionotropes.

How can I be each of their best shot at survival if I am the one nursing a broken heart?

So, we tune it all out, turn a blind eye to the suffering and focus on the medicine and show up every single day. That’s the best we can do, I guess.