My world has always been a miniature of family breakfasts, a friend or two for planning far-fetched, or what we like to call, “dream” holidays and watching documentaries of things I’ve never heard before. I was, and still am, at least to an extent, not very intrigued by the idea of human interaction. But all these facts shook and later toppled down by a cyclone called residency.
Like any other resident, I would question every cell in my being as to why I was doing this to myself. Every morning I would wake up with a heart rate of 120 and rush to reach the hospital by 7, with spicy armpits, parchment skin, multiple pens in various pockets of my scrubs, some with the caps and some without, aiming for at least one huge ink patch on any one site of my top every day. As I would step inside the lift, I hoped and prayed to be kicked by an epiphany that this place, was amidst the list of my dream holidays except that it was going to be the longest of all. But why did it never feel like one?
The most important part of a resident’s day is to communicate with the patients; about how they are if our treatment did any justice to them. Did they have a family that they always wanted? If the husband was happy with how the sisters took care of their wife’s minute needs after 9 months of massive transition? If we could make them excited with just the sound of our dopplers every morning and evening, let them have a bunch of hope that soon they’ll be able to cherish the life growing inside them. But I was clouded by the darkness inside me, it kept pulling me inside and I didn’t know how to get out and do the least, that is to even form sentences and talk.
Every ward round would started with accusations claiming that I was just looking at patients and never really seeing them, that I had a lack of warmth in me and that maybe, I was in a place where I never belonged. Now that I realise, that I was among those women who needed a ray of hope, a hand who cared to bring me back to life I’m so grateful that I found more than a few. Not only did they hold me but they untied each feather every day so that I could grow, be free and fly. Maybe that’s how God taps your forehead when you are too tired to even get up.
My parents have always pointed out the existence of my nonchalance and innocence in comparison to the notorious and boisterous world we live in. I’ve always been a quiet person, like my grandmother. So my father tells me, “If you don’t get up, they’ll kick you even harder in the butt” and as a matter of fact, they did. But slowly and steadily, even though I was late, I did speak. It was a fetal kick but it mattered to me.
I am a shy person in an alien environment and am threatened very easily by loud noises and crowds- a hard-to-swallow quality of an OBG resident. All my life, I have stayed put in my niche but then residency was a good, desperately needed kick in my butt. Some days, I was humiliated to the point where I wanted to dig a hole in the ground, have a backstage life of a vermiform and never come out. I asked myself again, “What am I doing here?” But my hollowness almost seemed like I was talking to a wall. I couldn’t help myself, how could I take care of another person?
A professor of mine, once told me, “If everyone likes you, you’re definitely doing something wrong.” And here I was, crossing miles for people, so far away from my peace, so that for once, they’d pay attention and like this silent girl with big eyes, only to realise that I was looking at an apple and not an orange. But then life doesn’t end here, does it?
I still have more than a year left of my residency. I cannot be more grateful to the mock world I’m being exposed to, aiding me to become a brawny butt. So that when I’m alone against the world, where no one is whispering wise words in my ear or even a tip of a finger I can gently brush on when I’m being hauled over the coals and everything is nothing but a blur, I know how to breathe and think. If there’s one thing, this place has taught me is that righteousness and a clean conscience are a rare find but if you have had even a piece of it, savour it and let it grow for you’ll always end up with the best of the world.