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Reminiscence : Dr. Bhavna Mohandas ( view bio )

It was on a rainy day that I first met her. The pitter-patter hushed the noisy wards; and had tuned everything to its rhythm. I loved the earthy smell that came with the first rain. The spray fell on my face as I walked down the aisle, scanning the beds; the casebooks; till I reached the woman I thought was her. ’Sheriffa?‘ She nodded.

We were busy savouring the freshness of third year. Finally after one and a half years, time had started serenading us again. Her name had come up in the ’clinical gems’ outside the Medicine lecture hall. ’Bed No:26, Ward 4; Don’t miss that case, someone told me. I had reached there promptly, but the bed lay empty. She had been taken up for the final MBBS examination. Day after day for five days I walked through the ward in vain. Determined not to miss `an oppurtunity’, I reached there that evening; way past the exam hours and the visiting hours.

She lay there alone…….on a bare mattress with islands of sponge peeping out here and there. I smiled at her as I armed myself with my notepad and stethoscope. `Did you have dinner?’. She nodded. I noticed the half empty packet of bread-the hospital ration. There was nothing else lining the rusted table on her side. I quickly took her history. She was 23. Her three children were back home….`And with you?’. She raised her hand to scratch her head.

The next day between classes, we discussed the case. `MS, MR with PAH’. `But what about her aortic area?’…….I am sure it is multivalvular, AS, AR, MS, MR…..`What did the PG say?’. `He got a TR also’.

Day after day as cases came and went, Sheriffa gradually passed into oblivion. Until one day I saw her again. She was brought to our ward on a busy admission day, paralysed. `She has Infective Endocarditis which probably caused an embolism’. I heard sir discuss during the rounds.

Something about her touched me beyond words. Her listlessness……the vacant stare. She fed herself daily on the bread and biscuits with her one good arm. Her paralysis recovered gradually—though quicker than I had expected. She was ofcourse, still a prize case; even more than before; now that three of her systems were involved.

I often spent my spare time observing her from a distance. She seemed to me like the centre of a vortex. The world around her spun at an amazing speed. But to her, every day and every hour was the same. She never contemplated on the cruel tricks fate had played on her. She neither cried nor sighed. Maybe life had conditioned her to be emotionally dry. May be that was her best defense.

May be …….time would harden us too; preclude us from being swept off by our emotions. Imagine what would happen if we stopped to bleed for each and every patient we meet. Or should equanimity be the quality we should cultivate? Equanimity – it is a brilliant concept, perhaps attained only by saints! Perhaps, we might be able to brace it! Perhaps, we should just continue to feel!

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