Sniffing the future
Back in the '90s and the early years of this millennium, we used to go back to our hometown of Nagpur in India almost every summer vacation. This was before we realized we could also go to other places in the world for a change. Anyways, how things worked back then was that Ammi would take us three children (or two, before 1997) some time in mid-June and Papa would stay behind for a couple more weeks. Then he used to fly over in July.
As soon as he arrived, Papa would be restless to go back to Dubai. His work, his business was on his mind, twenty-four/seven. I could never understand why he was so impatient to go back.. I mean, didn't he enjoy being with his sister? Parents? Friends? Relatives? I couldn't understand his impatience because I used to have a ball getting showered with love from my grandma, seeing cousins everyday, eating whatever I wanted to.. you know?
But now I realize why he was so impatient, so restless, why he itched to go back, because I'm in the same situation. I'm back home now but I can't wait to go back to Newcastle. I miss the lectures in the David Shaw Lecture Theatre. I miss whipping out my anatomy textbook every chance I got. I miss googling random medical terms and reading up about them.
So I joined Zulekha Hospital today as a nursing aid. Nurses, as you might know, are already 'aids' for doctors. And I'm an aid for the nurses. Despite my lowest-of-the-low position in the hospital hierarchy, I got to wear blue surgical scrubs. Scrubs that reveal my upper chest hair, so patients give me nasty looks and the younger South Indian nurses flirt with me.
I thought I'd be doing things to actually help the nurses like moving patients around, attending to their non-medical needs (because oh, anything medical requires a licence!) etc.. But on the first day itself, I felt like I was getting in the way of the nurses because they didn't seem to need my help. So the matron sent me to the third floor to watch an angioplasty.
An angioplasty is a minimally invasive operation which is performed to widen an artery of the heart that has been narrowed for some reason (usually fatty plaques in the artery wall or a thrombus [i.e., blood clot] lodged in the artery wall) and the resulting decreased blood flow to the heart muscle has caused a heart attack. Basically a wire thingy is inserted into your thigh's artery and then up to your heart's arteries. The wire is guided with the help of X-rays and a dye that doesn't let X-rays penetrate through it, so arteries appear dark. Once the narrowing is found, it is widened using a balloon which is inflated at the exact site of narrowing to push the wall back in place and re-establish proper blood flow.
At first I couldn't figure out the angiogram's constantly changing orientation so I was quite lost.. but eventually found my way around it. So cool! I wanna be a hotshot surgeon too!
Then later I sat in with Papa's uncle who is an ophthalmologist (eye specialist).. saw quite a few cases of viral conjunctivitis (infection of the outermost layer of the eye by a particular virus).
Needless to say, I didn't do much aiding work today. Ah well.
As soon as he arrived, Papa would be restless to go back to Dubai. His work, his business was on his mind, twenty-four/seven. I could never understand why he was so impatient to go back.. I mean, didn't he enjoy being with his sister? Parents? Friends? Relatives? I couldn't understand his impatience because I used to have a ball getting showered with love from my grandma, seeing cousins everyday, eating whatever I wanted to.. you know?
But now I realize why he was so impatient, so restless, why he itched to go back, because I'm in the same situation. I'm back home now but I can't wait to go back to Newcastle. I miss the lectures in the David Shaw Lecture Theatre. I miss whipping out my anatomy textbook every chance I got. I miss googling random medical terms and reading up about them.
So I joined Zulekha Hospital today as a nursing aid. Nurses, as you might know, are already 'aids' for doctors. And I'm an aid for the nurses. Despite my lowest-of-the-low position in the hospital hierarchy, I got to wear blue surgical scrubs. Scrubs that reveal my upper chest hair, so patients give me nasty looks and the younger South Indian nurses flirt with me.
I thought I'd be doing things to actually help the nurses like moving patients around, attending to their non-medical needs (because oh, anything medical requires a licence!) etc.. But on the first day itself, I felt like I was getting in the way of the nurses because they didn't seem to need my help. So the matron sent me to the third floor to watch an angioplasty.
An angioplasty is a minimally invasive operation which is performed to widen an artery of the heart that has been narrowed for some reason (usually fatty plaques in the artery wall or a thrombus [i.e., blood clot] lodged in the artery wall) and the resulting decreased blood flow to the heart muscle has caused a heart attack. Basically a wire thingy is inserted into your thigh's artery and then up to your heart's arteries. The wire is guided with the help of X-rays and a dye that doesn't let X-rays penetrate through it, so arteries appear dark. Once the narrowing is found, it is widened using a balloon which is inflated at the exact site of narrowing to push the wall back in place and re-establish proper blood flow.
At first I couldn't figure out the angiogram's constantly changing orientation so I was quite lost.. but eventually found my way around it. So cool! I wanna be a hotshot surgeon too!
Then later I sat in with Papa's uncle who is an ophthalmologist (eye specialist).. saw quite a few cases of viral conjunctivitis (infection of the outermost layer of the eye by a particular virus).
Needless to say, I didn't do much aiding work today. Ah well.