The Apocalypse

 A mere spectator I am to the Dance of Death

Not Able to fathom if it’s mere Nightmare or A fact

Who is to blame all ask? OPTIMISM I say

Sometimes Gut instinct protects one when Pandemics are to play

No one who studied Virology with its many mutations said

NO ONE from the Physicians Bodies like mine expected that oxygen we need had

The system was numb when we walked past a naked girls body in the cold December night 

The system was flak when we downplayed Violence in the name of clean chits given left and right

The system was broken when we gave HealthCare in the hands of businessmen and Political Goons

I am ashamed,  broken and shocked,  by the lack of food or urinals or Healthcare Staff at most of the hard earned beds with oxygen too

Patients dying of starvation, infections and fluid overloads too as a system overwhelmed by the brokenness that opened a can of furore

What will be the turn, is it turning for the better

Noone knows as people now battle for a place to cremate their father

I am ashamed to be a Doctor, who trained to heal, without mere equipments whats the use of  international degrees that appeal

We have PhDs and double doctorates but nothing would work

In a broken system that has been shaken with a jerk

No motivational words or speeches will stand true in this hour

The truth has been told by the Pyres burning without a stop forever

Mask up as that alone seems to be abundant,  hide in your homes as the enemy is out

To take your loved ones lying recumbant

Live each day with Gratitude to the body who has been helping through the turmoils

Wish the last breath has not to be taken now, Not now when there is an apocalypse in our soil 

 

 

C for Corona

 

A new Decade came with Promises Galore,

We celebrated it at the Strike around the Globe;

 

Little did we know that the Chinese were suffering,

With sickness and death silently with a disease unknown in human beings;

 

It appeared very distant, it appeared impossible,

How can something there affect us all across the shores?

 

I almost cracked myself laughing, when few put on the masks,

Called it uncalled fear and was sure it would not last;

 

Then the spring came and brought colours of confusion,

The disease was spreading slowly and surely but we could mark and isolate those;

 

Then we shut down, blamed and punished those who brought the disease,

This tiny virus became a giant issue for all of us;

 

When lives were getting lost and mainly doctors died,

We thought we were the heroes and were ready to sacrifice our lives;

 

Somehow dying of the virus felt like dying for the motherland,

Martyrdom would justify it all, we heard some say!

 

Then came the winters and the cold brought some hope,

Dussera, Diwali and Pongal, we thought our Gods had pulled the rope;

 

It had run away from us,

and we were ready to make merry and shop;

 

But it returned and returned with a vengeance,

The vaccine or the medicine has fallen short for all of us;

We are at war, we are, the hospitals are overwhelmed with so many of us;

 

Near or afar, receiving calls for oxygen or hospital bed or a medicine that can save a soul,

We are divided in despair and united in love, with our helpless hands and hopeless eyes creating a hole;

 

As we yet again hide our tired faces behind more impermeable masks,

Our eyes are tired and weary of listening to stories every dusk;

 

It’s difficult to be hopeful and martyrdom is also not gleamy,

With each day of counting, common sense seems to be leaving us;

 

With “Role models” of the society posting pictures of beaches and sun and sand,

The “Real Models” of the Society, seem to battling challenges of control, administration and saving lives with all in their hand;

 

The police, doctors, nurses, and the administrative heads are the Heroes of the hour,

With so much to do, the media houses seem to be ready to blame and shout;

 

While we debate about the importance of opening gyms and schools,

There are cricket matches going on and the Holy Dips in the rivers seem to be optimum;

 

Some say the Liquor shops should be on even if the city sleeps,

It is opportune to questions how we justify addiction over the broken dreams;

 

Is it revenue, or is it lives, what do we prioritize is soon becoming a blur,

As we pray for all fighting the battle,

the lungs that have patches of memories the virus stirs;

 

 

The tired bodies and the broken defences that the body build for us,

Nothing will break the human race more than the battles that we ourselves fight against us!

When Things Go Wrong As they Sometimes Will, Rest If you Must But Don't You Quit

 

Today I write as a Woman Doctor for the Woman Doctor!

Don’t we all want it perfect? The perfect Childhood, the perfect University, the perfect Partner and Perfect Life.

The Ideation of Perfect changes with age. As a young Girl, I used to look and Princess Diana and imagine this Beautiful girl in the Palace, so happy and Privileged, little did we know the Darkness she saw in her life and also in her death. When this week moved on with the multiple debates about who’s right in the Meghan-Harry Reveal It All with Oprah Winfrey, I couldn’t help but stop and acknowledge the fact that no one Really has it All.

Early Years and Education

When we study in school things go in a linear fashion. It is year starting, then Mid term exams, Final Exams, Results and Next Year. Every Year a New School Teacher, New subjects to learn, new skills to hone and life goes on year after year. I found myself seamlessly flowing through all of school and Medical School too. Assessments after assessments make you focus and refocus on goals. You want to select your subjects, specialty, interests and duties in Medical School. Then write Pre-Postgraduation entrance exams and crack it to enter one more world with new set of goals to achieve. As this is going to be the chosen specialty for life, you spend more time in the library and learn the craft from senior doctors in the specialty. Yet again after this, some of us go on to super specialize and set goals for yet another exam to be cleared and craft to be learnt.

You are a Doctor

By the end of this endless race that appears like every few years you are passing the baton to an older version of yours, many a times you just end up feeling exhausted.

At the end of all my training, I found myself at the age where I had to marry and start a family too. When you have always for 2 decades skipped weddings, functions, vacations and festivals to study or do your duty or prepare for an exam, suddenly this multi-tasking between a new family (your married one) and new profession (where you are the junior most) is quite daunting, especially for a woman.

You don’t know whether to read about the difficult case in the clinic should be a priority, or marking your ovulation dates or draining about the difficulties with the in-laws to your husband should be your priority. As a new doctor your work hours are usually long, and so with the limited time at home you have loads on the head.

Marriage

I have had friends who married late. After they super specialize, they find themselves sitting in dates arranged by their very eager parents with a strange guy asking about their affairs, virginity and salary in that order. Some of my Guy friends have also experienced sheer horror when the bride-to-be have asked about the future investment required for a private practice in their specialty and whether they would be able to live without the guy’s parents being around all the time. Ophthalmologists are weighed less than the Orthopedic Surgeons, Surgeons are weighed more than the Physicians and Pediatricians look for Gynecologists partners in the Marriage Melas of the Medical Fraternities. So, your life path pivots and moves according to so called “demand”

Many a time, marriages come with the whole change of city. India being multilingual, that can demand a whole new language to be learnt. So here you are either in Post Graduate studies or Junior Doctor learning a whole new language without which you can just not develop a Doctor-Patient bond at work place. Talking with colleagues or bosses or nurses at the hospital will also require you to learn the language, otherwise this new workplace will become quite isolating.

I have come across few friends who after finished the entire postgraduate studies in India, got married and went to the USA where our medical degrees aren’t recognized. This leads one to again study, crack exams and many a times pivot your professional course or specialty to take what is available and stay in the same city as your spouse.

Infertility

Another shocking statistic is the rate of Infertility among women health care professionals. For the general population, the infertility risk is approximately 12.1% according to CDC data. Women around the world with infertility state that they are the 1 in 8.  As women in medicine, we have an INCREASED RISK of infertility. Our risk is 24.1% for infertility, which means that for women in medicine, ONE IN FOUR of us will struggle with infertility.

Now this leads to a down spiral of testing, trying, blood work, ultrasounds and labelling. Imagine this when you are the junior most doctor in the hospital. You don’t have a voice, you don’t have flexible hours and so almost everyone on the floor knows you are going through the fertility saga. Injection shots in between clinical rounds, ultrasounds in between overnight duties, blood work by your own colleagues is the way a female medico is going to go through this. Added to this is the constant bullying by the families who have forgotten that this woman is a doctor and advise her everything from jadi booti from some baba to even “special” positions.

So, you pivot once more. To adjust the schedule, to take a break, to reduce the stress levels and to have bed rest to conceive the kid you had dreamt of.

Many a times when all this fails, the woman feels like a failure. Here she is someone who has studied and excelled in all she has done and then THIS is when she feels her body has failed her. The self loathe, self-hate and sheer crumbling of the self esteem affects her marriage and career both.

Maternity Support or Lack of it

Though you will feel like the entire nation wants you to get pregnant, not a soul in your professional career wants to support this time. You will hear male colleagues smirk and joke about the vomiting, your colleagues will cringe that they might have to do more duties when you are on a “Break” and there is disaster to finances because most of the private hospitals do not have any paid maternity leave or maternity benefits support. I have also seen instances where the doctor on maternity leave has been unceremoniously replaced by another because the work has to go on. There are no corporate rules or laws to this and many women suffer from insult to their careers in this period.

For the lack of childcare support, a lot of women leave workforces till the child is 2 or 3 years of age to take care of the baby and home. Though in my mind this is the bravest decision someone can make, many a times it brings utter crisis in the mind of this woman who set one goal after the other and thought she has finally “arrived” in her career to be again unsettled by the pregnancies and tiny babies. There is pivoting yet again.

Divorce

Many women doctors go through the dreaded D of divorce. There is not one reason for this complex marital situation. It brings the additional burden of managing in the meagre salaries that doctors are paid (unlike the public perception) and the emotional well-being of the children. I have seen many doctors where their kids are waiting in the clinics or the operation theatres while mommies are doing their duty and saving lives. It is always heart wrenching to see that, but as humans we yet again pivot and do what we can do best in the given situation for us and our families.

I remember years back one of our known doctors. She was an anesthetist. Her husband suddenly expired overnight of cardiac arrest. At age 35 she was a widow and mother of a single daughter. This is 30 years back when the acceptance of single mothers was lesser in the society. She left her profession, got married again to a businessman in the US, who didn’t want her to work anymore. All those 3 decades of preparation to become a doctor were sacrificed for the well being of herself and her daughter.

Pandemic

The pandemic has created a crisis as none other.

With absent child support, kids at home, vulnerable elders unable to travel and the constant risk of getting COVID from patients in the hospital has created despair in many families.

In 2020 women in workforce study done in the US, as many as 2 million women have left corporate workforce in the pandemic. The situation here is similar with women forced to be at home to homeschool, or help with online classes or isolate the family from the physician husbands who are carrying higher risk of the COVID.

Many doctors have also gone ahead and sent their children away for more than a year now to their parents’ home to reduce the disease danger to these kids and carry on their hospital duties without kids at home. Bringing women back to the workforce as this pandemic relentlessly continues is going to be yet another challenge.

Life continues to throw challenges and the Woman doctor takes it all. Looking after the needs of the inlaws, parent teacher meetings of children, looking after ailing parents in far off cities, attending to the needs of her patients and doing overnight duties to come back and pack the tiffin boxes for her kids and kiss them good bye.

I write more about women doctors because I feel their journeys are unique. With studies, marriage, job changes and kids her life keeps pivoting and destinations keeps changing. She is many a times alone as changes in cities have left her feel uprooted, yet she tries her best to sink in deep and sing the song of inclusion.

As Sheryl Sandberg described in her book "Option B":

 “Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.” Slowly,”

So, in this world, as everything around us keep changing, there is only one thing that is constant and that is Change.

Accepting Changes is challenging. But Accepting that Change is Constant is relieving.

 So as I cry on a day when I have had to shift my clinic appointments as I have to make my younger child attend his first Preprimary Classes online and the elder one requires assistance yet again for the online submissions,  I exhale and tell myself, “Yet another change and this will too be tackled”