Low Man's Lyric
The human fear of death and the eternal desire to prolong life is after all human. Combine this very basic instinct with the wear and tear that our bodies are blessed with and you have a morbid fear of hospitals.
No one likes hospitals - except when you are the proud parent/grandparent to be or a doctor,fresh out of medical school with a lust for the knife and scalpel. Honestly, even doctors who treat hospitals as their fields of play sometimes start hating the place after a while.
The reality of mortality is very chilling and the impressions on the mind are long-lasting. One of my first visits to the hospital as a kid was when my mother was involved in a freak kitchen accident. As conditioned kids my age would react, I took an instant dislike for all the sounds,smells and images the place had to offer - people attached to tubes, the stench of disinfectants, morose people,mostly crying and so on. All of that made think of the place as a veritable hell. Who would want to come here of their own will? Or even work here?
My personal experience with hospitals did nothing to redeem the notion. At 19, I went under the surgeon's scalpel for an appendix removal. The operation is the simplest and least complicated of surgeries as any surgeon would have you believe. However, as fate had decreed in my case, there was quite a bit of delay between then instant the anaesthesia took effect and my dear old surgeon went about cutting me open! Some of the curses that flew out of my mouth in response to the pain at that instant would have made Captain Haddock proud! Nevermind the scars on your stitched up tummy, the mental scars of these experiences,images and most of all time spent as a sick human in a bed are unerasable. Hospitals are not places to visit, least of all places to be the subject of other people's visits!
My most recent visit to the hospital was today - for a friend who was involved in a road accident. The impressions this time were pretty much the same as always. However, time and experiences can bring out newer and probably more optimistic perspectives. Hospitals are incredibly sad places to see and work day in and day out. To the emotionally driven human, they can be depressants that no medicine can cure.
Yet, the underlying theme in a hospital environment is always that of hope. There's hope in the form of wailing new arrivals, or in the endless night vigils that we keep(or someday will keep) to accompany a sick kin or even hope in the one-eyed or one-legged patient's attempt to get on with life(or whatever's left of it). Hospitals stand as examples of life's dichotomies. On one side is mortality - omniscient and ever lurking around the corner. It can come to you,me or the guy sitting next to us and we'll never know when. On another side is the opportunity that is life. If death fails or even remotely gives you a chance, then life presents itself once again with endless opportunities. The opportunities may or may not be the same as the ones you had before the brush with death, nevertheless new beginnings will beckon if even a flicker of life remains. Hospitals still remain those little viewing screens of the endless tug-of-war between mortality and "humanity".
No one likes hospitals - except when you are the proud parent/grandparent to be or a doctor,fresh out of medical school with a lust for the knife and scalpel. Honestly, even doctors who treat hospitals as their fields of play sometimes start hating the place after a while.
The reality of mortality is very chilling and the impressions on the mind are long-lasting. One of my first visits to the hospital as a kid was when my mother was involved in a freak kitchen accident. As conditioned kids my age would react, I took an instant dislike for all the sounds,smells and images the place had to offer - people attached to tubes, the stench of disinfectants, morose people,mostly crying and so on. All of that made think of the place as a veritable hell. Who would want to come here of their own will? Or even work here?
My personal experience with hospitals did nothing to redeem the notion. At 19, I went under the surgeon's scalpel for an appendix removal. The operation is the simplest and least complicated of surgeries as any surgeon would have you believe. However, as fate had decreed in my case, there was quite a bit of delay between then instant the anaesthesia took effect and my dear old surgeon went about cutting me open! Some of the curses that flew out of my mouth in response to the pain at that instant would have made Captain Haddock proud! Nevermind the scars on your stitched up tummy, the mental scars of these experiences,images and most of all time spent as a sick human in a bed are unerasable. Hospitals are not places to visit, least of all places to be the subject of other people's visits!
My most recent visit to the hospital was today - for a friend who was involved in a road accident. The impressions this time were pretty much the same as always. However, time and experiences can bring out newer and probably more optimistic perspectives. Hospitals are incredibly sad places to see and work day in and day out. To the emotionally driven human, they can be depressants that no medicine can cure.
Yet, the underlying theme in a hospital environment is always that of hope. There's hope in the form of wailing new arrivals, or in the endless night vigils that we keep(or someday will keep) to accompany a sick kin or even hope in the one-eyed or one-legged patient's attempt to get on with life(or whatever's left of it). Hospitals stand as examples of life's dichotomies. On one side is mortality - omniscient and ever lurking around the corner. It can come to you,me or the guy sitting next to us and we'll never know when. On another side is the opportunity that is life. If death fails or even remotely gives you a chance, then life presents itself once again with endless opportunities. The opportunities may or may not be the same as the ones you had before the brush with death, nevertheless new beginnings will beckon if even a flicker of life remains. Hospitals still remain those little viewing screens of the endless tug-of-war between mortality and "humanity".