The call of duty...

The excruciating wait for close to 5 years finally culminating with the presence of a little prefix to the name “doctor”____

I won’t go into what and how of medicine now….

Finally the results came out and clearing would indicate that I became a doctor… (Everyone would be a doctor…….eventually!). The most exciting moment where we would don our new white aprons and dangle a steth proudly around our neck and say hi...Doc! The postings schedule came out and I was posted to the department of community medicine…for 3 whole months. The postings were 45 days of urban postings and 45 days of rural postings in Kaiwara. The three ORC (out reach centers) where we were to be posted were MK Nagar, BK Nagar and Anjanappa gardens. After some higgle haggle with who would attend the rural and urban postings first, we set off to our destinations. I was posted to MK Nagar ORC with a fellow doctor Dr. Varsha.

We were on our own now. We had to find our way to the centre. Though I did have a vague idea of where it was located I knew I couldn’t navigate right on dot. (Pardon me for I’m slightly directionally challenged!). Swallowing that so called male ego of not wanting to ask for directions and inspite of being in a white coat(and that steth hanging around my neck) asked the locals for directions to the decrepit clinic (well, I would love to see the reaction on their faces when they come for treatment!). A short climb on the staircase (with 1 foot high steps and 1 foot wide) we came to a small door….I took a deep breath and entered…..

A PG was sitting there dispensing medicines to a few patients. A strange look crossed the faces of all those patients…for their fate was now to be handled by a newbie Yankee doctor who cared a donkey’s ass about studying for exams. Talk about luck!!!

Maybe I was expecting too much if I hoped that the PG would be there for sometime as a hand holding session or us newbies. Contrary to that she packed and left saying vaguely that the referral forms were here, tabs are here and pointed out to 2 huge gallon sized cans of syrup to dispense at our whims and fancy and gave us a register in which to enter the names of patients.

Now that two of us fresh and crisp right out of the oven docs were stuck in MK Nagar we smiled at our fate and settled down for duty.

I looked around the room; the state of the room is best left to the imagination.

Its about 6 feet wide and 8 feet in length (ahhh...I see jaws dropping!)

Our first patient, a 2 month old infant with some skin eruptions and a respiratory infection. We were basically lost trying to analyze the case. We gingerly prescribed an antibiotic after referring IDR a hundred times (all the time hoping we were right!).

Our second patient was a 35 yr old trader feigning a fever cough and asthma. A bit of prodding and he came up with a list of complaints that left us in a tizzy. I gave him some CPM tablet and he said can I have a few more(brings me to the question of who’s the doctor huh!!?!?)

Managed to get rid of him with some medicine.

Overall it was an experience of how inadequate our knowledge was and how much we were spoon fed that we could not handle a simple case independently. Well my guess is that its just a passing cloud and in a few days we will be baked deep and be confident enough to prescribe any medicine (all morphine and heroin mongers keep away!!).