Its been almost two years since I blogged blogged! I had started to believe that its stupid to blog. But I think I had only stupid stuff to blog about then. Now that I can't handle anymore stupidity alone, let me share some with you all invisible (?) real e-people.
So I finally got a post-graduation branch of my choice. Actually, my only choice, i.e. , psychiatry. To think about it, I am not quite sure when exactly I fell so deeply in love with it and why. All I remember is that I was and still am, totally intrigued by the science of it, human behavior to be precise. I was elated, almost hypomanic, when I got a diploma seat in psychiatry in my UG institute itself. Although I think acquaintances couldn't quite appreciate my amazing good luck when I told them I got DPM, for all that I got in return of my euphoric smile was an "Oh" or a nod suggesting something I don't want to put down in words. But for all and sundry, I am going to be a psychiatrist and its a dream come true.
Though I had an idea about the science part of it, to be honest, psychiatry is nothing like we read in the books during our MBBS. To really know how a normal human psyche can go cuckoo, you gotta see it. And that I think its the biggest tragedy of my patients.
People specialize and super-specialize after MBBS. There is an internship in between which is supposed to be like a window-shopping experience for various branches, but we all know how professional we are to make the worst possible use of it. So psychiatry remains a mysterious branch for all the non-psychiatrists forever.
Unfortunately this is also a fact that I got to learn practically.
I think the more doctors specialize, the more they forget what they learned in their earliest medical school days. Why else would a super-specialist refuse to see a psychiatric patient saying she is mentally unstable? (Its a fact that we don't admit mentally stable patients, duh!) And add that she is unfit for examination? I am totally bewildered to know that you need to be fit to get examined!
Actually, PSY is a label given to patients by non-psychiatric clinicians who have somehow managed to unlearn their basic communication skills. PSY is also a label that is read by non-psychiatric clinicians as mysterious and beyond all medical and surgical realms. You can't get a patient to remain quite, PSY ref. You can't explain a patient his/her problem, send PSY ref. Sometimes I feel we psychiatrists are perceived as magicians. Like we can miraculously sedate a patient with 2 cc of calmpose which no other physician/surgeon can! The point I am trying to make is that, as soon as a patient starts 'behaving' abnormally doctors start acting like helpless distant observers, even though they may know the cause of such a change. Abnormal behavior isn't a synonym of dangerous. At least this experience has helped me to empathize with the patients' relatives better.
All I want to ask all the doctors who read this page is that, before you ever get irritated with a patient or a relative, just think of any sick day of your life. Better still, think of a sick day in one of your family member's life, irrespective of the severity.
There is alot more that I could write right now, but I'd save it for the next post.
Please feel free to comment, express your views on my views. Hope I haven't revealed any identities here.
PS: Isn't it ironic that the most heartless people that I have met till date happen to be cardiologists?
PPS: Blog material can't be used as an evidence in the court of law.
