"So, how is the experience?"
My grandmother questioned me an hour back, wanting to know about my experience of having spent 2 days entirely at a hospital. I was accompanying my grandmother who had to be under medical observation for her fluctuating haemoglobin count.
"So, how is the experience?"
When you are an aspiring writer, it gets increasingly difficult every time you are asked to describe an event or an object. The words do not escape your mouth unless they have become a part of a breathtaking sentence.
"When you speak, it is just the first draft. You do not have to put in so much effort as in writing," I tell myself. But the words become paranoid patients, not willing to be discharged before they spend good time at the Intensive Thinking Unit.
I still took my time to collect my thoughts and tried speaking like a writer to my grandmother. I said, "So much blood and so many bandages makes one understand the frailty of the human body and the strength of human bonds." The nurse who was administering medicines to the neighboring patient threw me a look which diagnosed that I also need to be kept under medical observation.
And so, I got down to typing my experiences, wondering why the human mind found it comfortable to write/read truth than to speak/hear it.
(Which led me to remember this earlier post.)
Hospitals seem to be the place where most grandparents and parents face regret for not forcing their children to pursue MBBS. I heard an old lady resting in the neighboring ward say, "We missed the opportunity to make our boy a doctor. Let us at least search for a bride who is a doctor."
Would the future to-be-bride have imagined that her wedding oath would be decided by her Hippocratic oath?
Hospitals also function like cinema theaters playing Indian movies, with a range of emotions being displayed in a room of 4 patients. You see joy. You see longing. You see sadness. You see anger.
One patient was overjoyed because she was informed by the doctor that she could follow her normal diet from the next day, which meant that she could return to eating non-vegetarian food. One patient longed to know if the people in his apartment enquired about him after his admission to the hospital. My grandmother was sad that she was troubling her family members owing to her ill health. And another patient was angered that her Lord was fond of placing one hurdle after the other on her journey.
I clearly remember a nurse's response when the patient blamed her Lord in anger. "The Lord only tests those who are strong enough to face difficulties."
I wished that every doctor included this quote in his prescription, along with the names of medicines that provide very less motivation.
I also experienced a wide range of emotional states at this place.
Fear. Gratitude. Joy. Sadness.
Fear every time I crossed the casualty ward on my way out of the hospital, that I might suddenly hear a scream of grief. Gratitude that the society and the world are still at a state where they are filled by more screams of anger than by screams of grief. Joy that many nurses alternate very easily between gossiping and being guardian angels. Sadness that the shit of a disabled human still needs to be cleaned up by another human.
And only when I noticed my moods oscillating to the extremes, did I understand how beautifully Buddhist a doctor had to be.
In the room that my grandmother was admitted, the doctors visited the patients every 2-3 hours and provided affirmations that they were en route to becoming healthier. As I noticed this, I marvelled at the irony of the medical profession. Would there be another profession where the employees genuinely wished that their clients never faced any problems, though that meant lesser growth and opportunities to the employees?
I tried imagining a data analyst who wished for his client to never face any challenges with his data. And I understood that my imagination needed some data treatment.
As I continue to type my thoughts, I notice my grandmother looking at me like a kindergarten kid who is eager to narrate the new story taught at school. I stop typing and ask her if she wants to say something. "Do you remember the old lady who lived alone in the house above ours?" she asks. I nod, preparing myself for a tale that could be made interesting only by my grandmother. The writer in me tries to disagree initially, wanting to type more but he gives in pretty soon, realizing that a part of the writer would not exist if not for this storyteller-grandmother.
And so, a tale unfolds. So does my understanding in this place of life and death.
My grandmother questioned me an hour back, wanting to know about my experience of having spent 2 days entirely at a hospital. I was accompanying my grandmother who had to be under medical observation for her fluctuating haemoglobin count.
"So, how is the experience?"
When you are an aspiring writer, it gets increasingly difficult every time you are asked to describe an event or an object. The words do not escape your mouth unless they have become a part of a breathtaking sentence.
"When you speak, it is just the first draft. You do not have to put in so much effort as in writing," I tell myself. But the words become paranoid patients, not willing to be discharged before they spend good time at the Intensive Thinking Unit.
I still took my time to collect my thoughts and tried speaking like a writer to my grandmother. I said, "So much blood and so many bandages makes one understand the frailty of the human body and the strength of human bonds." The nurse who was administering medicines to the neighboring patient threw me a look which diagnosed that I also need to be kept under medical observation.
And so, I got down to typing my experiences, wondering why the human mind found it comfortable to write/read truth than to speak/hear it.
(Which led me to remember this earlier post.)
Hospitals seem to be the place where most grandparents and parents face regret for not forcing their children to pursue MBBS. I heard an old lady resting in the neighboring ward say, "We missed the opportunity to make our boy a doctor. Let us at least search for a bride who is a doctor."
Would the future to-be-bride have imagined that her wedding oath would be decided by her Hippocratic oath?
Hospitals also function like cinema theaters playing Indian movies, with a range of emotions being displayed in a room of 4 patients. You see joy. You see longing. You see sadness. You see anger.
One patient was overjoyed because she was informed by the doctor that she could follow her normal diet from the next day, which meant that she could return to eating non-vegetarian food. One patient longed to know if the people in his apartment enquired about him after his admission to the hospital. My grandmother was sad that she was troubling her family members owing to her ill health. And another patient was angered that her Lord was fond of placing one hurdle after the other on her journey.
I clearly remember a nurse's response when the patient blamed her Lord in anger. "The Lord only tests those who are strong enough to face difficulties."
I wished that every doctor included this quote in his prescription, along with the names of medicines that provide very less motivation.
I also experienced a wide range of emotional states at this place.
Fear. Gratitude. Joy. Sadness.
Fear every time I crossed the casualty ward on my way out of the hospital, that I might suddenly hear a scream of grief. Gratitude that the society and the world are still at a state where they are filled by more screams of anger than by screams of grief. Joy that many nurses alternate very easily between gossiping and being guardian angels. Sadness that the shit of a disabled human still needs to be cleaned up by another human.
And only when I noticed my moods oscillating to the extremes, did I understand how beautifully Buddhist a doctor had to be.
In the room that my grandmother was admitted, the doctors visited the patients every 2-3 hours and provided affirmations that they were en route to becoming healthier. As I noticed this, I marvelled at the irony of the medical profession. Would there be another profession where the employees genuinely wished that their clients never faced any problems, though that meant lesser growth and opportunities to the employees?
I tried imagining a data analyst who wished for his client to never face any challenges with his data. And I understood that my imagination needed some data treatment.
As I continue to type my thoughts, I notice my grandmother looking at me like a kindergarten kid who is eager to narrate the new story taught at school. I stop typing and ask her if she wants to say something. "Do you remember the old lady who lived alone in the house above ours?" she asks. I nod, preparing myself for a tale that could be made interesting only by my grandmother. The writer in me tries to disagree initially, wanting to type more but he gives in pretty soon, realizing that a part of the writer would not exist if not for this storyteller-grandmother.
And so, a tale unfolds. So does my understanding in this place of life and death.
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