I love you all my patients

A lot of times my poor patients give me such honeyed comments that I am taken aback. I am taken aback instantaneously without my will or efforts. They call me their messiah, and they never forget to bring me home made delicacies, hand made gifts during the festive season. They love the fact that I take interest in their lives. They feel ingratiating that I know most of their family members by names. It is no that I am approached for the medical disorders by my close-held horde of patients; they approach me for their personal and social problems as well. They trust me that whatever advice I would render would be the best one and that is the driving force in such situations. I have been made to intervene a lot of family feuds where I hold regard from both the parties involved in bad blood; and in most of the cases, my decisions have been duly respected. I feel good. 

I am not a doctor for whom there exists a demarcating line between professional and personal worlds. A lot of things that I do professionally embark on my personal spheres and the vice versa is also substantially true. Sometimes I wish I had copied down all the incidences of my life that happened after I started my hospital; I have seen the aspects of life and relationships in such a diversity that I am sure a lot of human behavior related theories could have been inferred from my experience. And I don’t want to be self-aggrandizing to take all the credit back home myself; I am sure a lot of doctors feel the same way. Patients come to us and uncover their problems in details. In a lot of cases, the source of their problems lies in their lives, in their minds, in their relationships. We become witness to them and this never ending process of learning keeps on going and going.

7 tips for anger management

Arrange a timeout: This is imperative; only those who have practiced it know its importance. Whoever told you that counting till 100 is for kids only must have smoked something gross. You ought to take a break from the circumstances of the heated moment, to be able to assess the situation from a different perspective.

Take deep breaths: Yes ! If you know how to meditate, you are so close to master the art of killing the angst prematurely. Deep breathing takes your concentration away from the problem and in turn, dilutes its memories. It is said one who knows art of breathing knows exactly how to keep anger under check.

Drink some water: More the merrier! It has been shown in numerous experiments that drinking water does something detrimental to the life span of anger and you must note that down. To enhance the effects, drink every gulp with a lot of savoring. Make your affair with water a grand one and prized one.

Get some physical exercise: Physical exercises are known to provide that vent for suppressed emotions. People go on for instant running, or weight lifting or brisk walking or any form of exercise they indulge in, the moment they start feeling their anger level escalating. Exercises release a spurt of positive hormones which restores the body’s environmental mileu to the optimal level.

Think before you speak: Only fools speak just like that; a cultivated mind knows the words that would be shooting from the lips. Anger suppresses the tolerability and wrong selection of words can create mayhem; don’t allow yourself to get provoked and think twice before you utter a sentence.

Identify possible solutions: Focus on something that takes your attention away from the anger source. Identify the reasons for your outburst and look out for the measures to contain it right there. Remind yourself that anger won't fix anything, and might only make it worse. As they say ‘Don’t go near the water until you learn how to swim’. Either lower down your threshold of the repetitive stimulus that causes you anger or plainly learn to modulate your mind using bundles of practicality.

Use humor to release apprehension: Humor is the antidote for all anxieties and angst. Use it effectively and watch your humor-proclivity-index breaking records along the y-axis. Don't use cynicism or sarcasm, though — it can hurt feelings and make things worse by contributing to misunderstandings and keeping grudges.

First illness of my life

During the first week of my life, beneath my seemingly glowing angelic skin, not everything was as normal as it appeared. As the days passed, my skin color started turning yellow. I started regurgitating out and turned sluggish. As if I started paying out for my past life’s sins in eagerness; how else can one relate a childhood illness? I was examined by the pediatrician and was diagnosed to be suffering with ‘Neonatal Jaundice’, a condition that takes place soon after birth and is characterized by development of deep jaundice. I was given conservative treatment at first, which included a lot of intravenous fluids and allied medications. 

My parents passed sleepless nights on my hospital bed, as in those days infant mortality was quite high and refractory neonatal jaundice was not a common phenomenon. Hopes were taking a jolt and gloom was the predominant emotion in my family. It was then that my pediatrician announced to subject me to an interventional procedure, exchange transfusion. This is a process in which the blood is made to pass through a machine in which the blood is filtered to thwart the toxic levels of bilirubin and other metabolites. I was made to undergo left sided exchange transfusion that very night; by that time my face had lost all its sheen and vitality & I had started getting dehydrated. But then as they say ‘faith will move mountains’, affection of my parents and competency of my doctor put me back on the pedestal of life, with double the vigor.

Random moments to cherish

The olive-coated voice of your love interest when you met first.

The chutzpah of childhood.

The thrill of overpowering someone in a game where you had been an underdog.

Your highest academic exploit.

The all time favorite tune of yours; which you consider yourself to be a part of.

The moment when you realized that life has more hidden meanings than some of the supernatural teleserials put together.

Mixed feelings when you flip down one of the old family albums.

Waiting in the crisp attire and bated breaths to be interviewed for the first time in your life for that 9 to 5.

Touch of icecream to the tip of your tongue.

Cumulative sound of hundreds of cuckoos, on a bright spring morning.

Pulling the window curtains to allow first ray of light enter your room.

Cuddling with your kid.

Suddenly coming to know that you actually shed tears watching a film.

The day you converted a foe to a friend.

The affection in your parents’ eyes when you outperformed yourself to make them happy.

When you start relating bits of your life with quotes from others (and you actually spend hours searching quotes).

Someone calls you with such an incredibly familiar tone that you instantly succumb to an induced déjà vu.

Keep it simple, keep it fair

I start my morning ward rounds very early in the morning. I believe that the first rounds of the day should be the most committed ones as one can devote a lot of time to the patients. And I must say, I have been bestowed with some of the most efficient nurses and staff that make this exercise a tonic for the day ahead. The rounds incorporate a lot of clinical examination, asking questions, reviewing lab reports, assessing clinical progress, answering queries, sensitizing about the change of treatment when required, counseling etc. I have an intense inclination to see things going on in an orderly way in my hospital. I take note of every patch of dust on the floor and every cripple in bed sheets. I feel bad when a patient complains that air conditioning in his room was not working properly during the night. I feel bad when a patient tells me that he had to press the ‘Nurse Call Button’ two times before he was attended by someone. Initially, when I had started my hospital, I used to get irate with such complaints and the concerned staff had to bear the brunt. As the time passed, the number of such episodes started decreasing, and my paroxysms of anger started getting evanescent. Now I don’t easily get angered by such things. By getting angered and displaying wrath, one can never achieve an objective fully. Anger handicaps the ability to use the conscience clearly, and in healthcare sector, we just can’t let ourselves work without our conscience and insight at proper places. I have made it mandatory for all the new staff to attend an induction program. This has been in practice at my hospital much before it started in most of the corporate hospitals in India; I learned about this in details during my stints at Hong Kong in early nineties. And I have seen the benefits. People joining my organization clearly get to know what their objectives and how do they fit in a certain role; that eases my load and spares me from unnecessary worries.

Potential Power of Prayer

I believe that the authority of prayer is first felt by the realization of what a prayer is all about. Prayer has power and it forms the sacred cord between us and God. It's a sense of God's assent in our dominions. People have different thoughts about possibilities that a prayer beholds. To some of us, prayers stimulate our own belief-cells and by virtue of positive thought process, we accomplish what we had been praying for. To some of us, prayers activate positively skewed energy chakras of Nature and help making us and our wishes in rhythm. To some of us, prayer is an outlet to communicate our feelings with God, and he blesses us just like a parent would do. Whether prayer is the astrophysical entity or a soliloquy, I can’t say with certainty; however, I have realized that a prayer has a lot to do with our own energy fields and power of belief.

I believe that we experience the stellar power of God when our wishes start getting fulfilled. We realize that God has been reaching out for us all along and the realization of establishment of bimodal dialogue is one of those priceless feelings one never forgets. Apostle Paul wrote to the people of Ephesus about God's yearning for us in a quite exquisite way "that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of people, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles." In prayer, the essence of our hearts and minds are streamlined to stir the super conscious and in this effort we also stimulate our own subconscious mind; the forces, in unison, make the most of the miracles. Prayer has such transforming power that it is said ‘Courage is fear that has said its prayers’! And along the same lines it is also said that the function of prayer is not to persuade God, but rather to change the nature of the person who prays.

Random Childhood Memorabilia

A dry May and a dripping June bringeth all things in tune. Such are the ways of childhood; some sunshine and some shades and what you get is a perfect blend of life in return. During my growing years, I tried my hands at every possible sport. And as I did that I found as if I was having a look at my own inner world, from different dimensions and varying focal lengths, of course. I used to be the ace shooter for my basketball team and contributed heavily in a series of triumphs in various tournaments. Playing basketball gave me that urbane edge, that stylish connotation. I used to play cricket also; my primary role was that of an off-break baller, though I fitted in the skin of an all rounder perfectly; I loved to keep the wickets on ‘as and when required’ basis. I used to score runs when in need, used to be electric in field and used to rough up the umpire on an odd day.

I was this typical Indian teenager, full of fracas and froth. The days gave enough reasons to be jubilant, and the night gave enough reasons to sleep tight. As the final exams of 9^th class were approaching, my jig at sports blessed me with fractured patella bone (right sided), and to my apprehension, I had to miss the classes for a good two months. It came as a shock, as an eye opener you may say. It was so difficult sitting at home and not doing any activities that mention sports; it was like arriving at a screeching halt from a full throttle ride. It was one of the palpable Kafkaesque experiences of my life, and I can still feel the gloom that used to haunt me then.