Musings of a Doctor

Posted on March 23, 2020 by Ruchi

I am a doctor and unlike the Facebook frame I am not glad that I am at work. I would too like to #staysafe #stayhome. Yet, I will not leave my duty and stay put till I can.

It’s totally unsafe to work because most of the hospitals have reduced manpower, lack of resources especially PPE and that even at the height of pandemic our faternity has to deal with people who are trying to make profit out of this situation.

Lack of essential PPE, hoarding by general public of masks, gloves, N95 masks not only makes us vulnerable, but we do risk carrying the infection across to our families. We are afraid each day of being sick and making our loved ones sick. We are not running away from our duties but the lack of empathy for medical professionals do make our stance difficult. In the past, we have been beaten up mercilessly. Hiding histories, significant details, missing out necessary medication and then blaming the health condition on doctor is not a new situation. It’s coming to light only now when bureaucrats and socialities are doing such things publicly.

Medicine is an imperfect science. We do not have a cure for common cold. We never know how one medicine will behave in a multitude of patients. Yet over the years we have been trolled, stamped and punished for applying logic in whatever we know. We have been fined heavily for what could have been just a anaphylactic reaction. We have been questioned over our thought process. At the end if the day we are not Gods, we do not want to be placed on a pedestal. We have read medical science and understood to the best of our capabilities. We just want to be treated as a fellow human being.

“I urge you to engrave this on the template of your memories: there are thousands of diseases in this world, but Medical Science only has an empirical cure for twenty-six of them. The rest is … guesswork.

Eric Segal ( Doctors )

It does not help that people still throng to hospitals for reassurance that they do not have covid. The covid test is not a cure, nor does it clearly rule out a person. A sample taken during early incubation period might be negative as the viral load will be too less to be detected. Hence the need for a strict quarantine.

Now is not the time to complain. If you are fortunate enough to sit at home please make use of that time by slowing down. In the busy lives we have been living, most of us had starting ignoring our own families. Now is the time to reconnect.

The canals in Venice are clear, skies over Italy and Wuhan less polluted. May be Mother earth needed this respite. May be we all needed to slow down. Let’s slow down for a while and let the nature heal itself.

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