Our hospital’s canteen sucked. It really did. Tony, the guy who owned and managed the canteen just sold tea but pardon me.. it tasted like citric acid mixed with caffeine. Okay, I know I sound horrible and obnoxious but that’s not the point! The point is that the standards of services being provided here are a lot less than what we deserve.
Imagine yourself working extremely hard all around the clock– Fixing broken bones; replacing joints; seeing patients in the office; checking their X rays; monitoring plasters; walking here after there all day long like dogs. In debt for all that, what do you ask? What do you ask? A decent Goddamned break?
Voila! You will get the break only to find soon that you’re not even accommodated with proper rest areas or convenient things to eat and drink. Everytime I’d complain Mr Tony I need coffee not tea he’d spontaneously reply "Coffee is expensive, nobody likes it.. tea is cheap and everybody loves it. You are not in Amereeka sir jee."
I have to fake him a smile every time he’d reply me with that itchingly true answer, wondering how being a son of a you know what must be in his genes and grab that friggen cup of tea. Once, I found a dead cockroach floating in the cup.
Nevermind, It’s not Amereeka .
Yes sir Yes!
I don’t work in great Hospitals like The Agha Khan University Hospital– but like any other brilliant hardworking male orthapedic surgeon, I too fix the same sort of battered broken disjoints all the same– don’t I? I’ve studied as much as they have– I’ve passed the same examinations they did. So why aren’t I being provided with the basic comforts of a doctor’s life? Is it because I’m favouring the government by charging less money and serving it? or is it because our system is designed in such ways that the average man will never step up to volunteer socially?
Doctors working hard in filthy desolated areas get to drink cockroach flavoured tea. Doctors, who work in urban areas– in the nine to five pleasure timings get to drink heavenly coffee. Why are the more deservant getting the least summits?
Yesterday, while I was cussing infront of my neighbour’s son because Pakistan lost a cricket match against India, he asked me how could I possibly swear– being a doctor it didn’t go with my image. He looked at me like i was doing something impossible as weird as genocide.
Morality is my code. Ethics are a prominent part of my profession. Being a doctor is being noble, it’s all about being pious. We serve the people. We heal them. People come to us with hope– and it is our duty to help them out. Our sole motive in life is to aid them with our abilities and knowledge. Those patients are our subjects and we are their saviours. We do this for humanity– and care not for any obstacle coming in our way. We have no incentive behind doing these noble deeds. Incentives suchas financial items. I repeat, we do this only for humanity not money. You fell for it right? So did my neighbour.
Eighty five percent of that was crap.
Razia died last night because her son didn’t have the money to get her operated in time. Zaika’s husband could not afford– at any cost, an incubator for his new born child. His baby died a painful death while he was just seven days old. Eighteen year old Qazi died last night because some robbers shot him in the stomache.. he was brought to the hospital in time– but they didn’t have legal police documents to complete the minor formalities before medicating him.. So yeah, he died too.
Me, and my team – oh we didn’t stand up like spiderman, transforming in to a funny constume incognito: We just stood there and watched the show.
We do cure. But if you expect us to be God you’re just overrating us. Some people take us doctors for granted. Some of us doctors’ just cure people to be paid. Most of us do this for a living. And what’s so wrong in it? We study three times more than normal MBA’s do.
Sometimes, I wonder what else is the cycle of life? We are born, we consume our lives.. we get old and damaged.. we get ourselves maintained by doctors– and then we eventually die. No matter how deep the oil reserves in Iraq are, we all know they’ll empty up someday.. and the universal question will rise.. ‘then what’– It’s the nothingness the world began with and it’s the nothingness it’s going to end with.
Everything has an end.. our job is to just try and delay it. Everything that begins.. brings along it’s expiry date. No matter how far bio-technology advances; irrespective of discoveries like male pregnancy, bone marrow transplants, HIV positve infected life extension prophylactic therapeutics, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), etc – One supreme reality will never change the fact that We’re human beings first.. and great thinkers later.
We humans are going to remain mortals forever. That is the way we are designed– Moreover, we’re designed to think and feel.
I wrote this blog for a difference. Yeah, we’re sick of hearing about bomb blasts and suicidal explosions. Let’s make a difference now.
We can’t just let people die because they can’t afford medicine while we bite the Big Mac.