What almost made me cry as an Indian Doctor.
And it might make you cry too.
It’s a story about being humbled and appreciating what we have in life.
So it starts with me just graduating from medical school and around 3 months into my compulsory rotatory internship into a government hospital. I experienced something that had a profound impact on me to this date.
In India, there are two systems of healthcare. One is the privately-owned big corporate hospitals, which usually caters to the wealthy and well to do people. The other one is the government hospitals, which usually serve as training centers for medical graduates like me and caters to the majority of India, people who are not so lucky to afford the enormous medical bills. They are served either free of cost or at very subsidized rates, and the government bears the expenditures.
These government hospitals make the backbone of a very overworked yet very necessary healthcare system, which I can proudly say serves everyone in the best possible way irrespective of how deep their pockets are.
Coming back to the story, I was posted in the Department of Internal Medicine as an intern, and I was assigned the duty to check up the patients presenting to the outpatient along with senior residents and consultants.
The OPD started at sharp 8 a.m. and I was ready to examine and take history of the patients until 2 p.m. after having a heavy breakfast.
It was around 12 noon when a woman in her 70s came and sat at the chair, lying next to me. I called her Amma (a term used to refer respectfully to women of older age).
I asked, Amma, what is troubling you? She could barely speak and tried to reply to me in her faint voice when I noticed she was holding her old prescription in her hand. I gently asked her to give me that old prescription so I could get an idea about her current diagnosis. She handed me the paper with shivering hands.
On the top of her paper was written hypertension ( a condition with elevated blood pressure ). I immediately picked up the apparatus lying at my table and started measuring her blood pressure. It came as 210/120, which is very, very high. I sent her to be injected with a drug that quickly lowered the blood pressure and asked her to come back.
She returned after some 10 odd minutes, looking a bit better, but still, I could sense some profound grief inside her. She sat down next to me as I asked her,
“Amma, have you been taking the pills prescribed to you”?
She said replied to me in a single word. No.
I explained to her that her blood pressure was very high because she had not been taking the pills, and it could lead to some serious issues like a heart attack or a stroke. I asked her the reason for her not being compliant with drugs.
She told me that she forgets to take the drug to which I asked her doesn’t she have anyone in her family who could remind her?
It was at this point in time when she started crying. I gently asked her, “What happened Amma, is everything okay ”?
She told me that her husband died 10 years ago, who she loved very dearly. Now, she was living with her son and his wife, who treated her very badly.
She felt like she was being a burden on them and how much it hurts to see her only son whom she brought up with so much love and care to treat her this way. And she told me all this while crying.
I almost teared up listening to her, knowing that she was not alone. This has become the story of every other household.
I tried speaking when I choked at first with emotions.
Gave myself a minute and drank a glass of water.
And all I could do at that moment was tell her, “Amma, I know it’s very difficult, but it’s your health. You have to take care of yourself. All you need to do is take this medication regularly and keep visiting monthly to get yourself checked up. I hope god helps you in all the ways he can, but think of me as your son, who is requesting you to never miss the pill again because it could damage your heart or your brain”.
She listened to me very calmly, trying to absorb all I was saying while rubbing away her tears. And guess what she did next?
She tried to touch my feet out of gratitude (an Indian tradition to show respect) when I immediately stopped her.
I said “just now that I told you that I am just like your son. Please don’t do this”. And I touched her feet instead. And she blessed me with all her heart. Only god knows how heavy my heart felt at that time and how I held back my tears once again, which completely wetted my eyes.
She then stood up, blessed me one more time, and promised me that she would take her pill daily and would come for regular checkups.
This experience, which I had, is not very uncommon in these government hospitals where people who had nothing to themselves came to get their treatment.
I carried out my duties with a heavy heart for the rest of the day and laid down on the bed at night.
And this is what was running through my mind.
We as individuals are so much caught up in running after our next goal or accomplishment (for me, trying to get a good residency seat for my specialization followed by becoming some hotshot consultant) that we forget to value what all we already have and how far we have come.
We tend to ignore our families, our parents, who actually put us up in the place where we are right now and all that they sacrificed in doing so.
It’s great to always look forward but it’s equally rather more important to look backwards once in while to acknowledge how far we have come and who all played a role in that journey.
We always look and envy people who have so much more than us. But sometimes it’s important to look at people who possess so much less than us.
It gives you perspective. It humbles you as a human being. And that perspective will take you places, believe me.
I hope my experience gave you some perspective. If it didn’t, don’t forget to look back in your life and see how far you have come. And always remember the people who put you there.
I am proud of you.
