Since I have already mentioned the junior doctors, might as well make today’s topic about them. Over the years I have had many young medical students under my wing and quite a few I have seen grow into successful, skilled doctors and anesthesiologists. Some others have pretty much crashed and burned, or remained juniors for years and years before managing to pass into becoming general practitioners. Some of them try and try and never make it beyond being a GP. Some sail through the exams and become specialists with barely a bead of sweat broken. Some are amazing doctors, some just fail at life.

One of my favorite students was a young woman, about twenty when she graduated and entered the hospital as an intern. This is maybe ten, fifteen years back. We hit it off right away. She really reminded my of my sister, whom I had lost contact with not too long ago. Even today, I don’t know where she is and what she is doing. Some nights I think of her and wonder what she is doing now. It makes me sad that I do not know where she is. I am reasonably sure she is alive, since I think the authorities would inform me if she died. If she left her birth certificate and other documentation so that they could find her. Mother has told me again and again not to worry. I try not to.

My student was quite the prodigy, an extremely diligent girl who deeply cared for her patients and was always very attentive to every detail of her work. Apparently she was a consistent top scorer at the college as well, according to her lecturers, who were old colleagues of mine. She became my student when she decided that she wanted to specialize particularly in anesthesiology and sought me out. I was quite pleased, of course, and agreed to be her mentor. She began to accompany me whenever she was off her duties and observed what I did every day. We became very close friends and colleagues, even like family almost.

She was headed for a great future and she knew it. Everything was going perfectly for her. Until the accident. On her day off, right after lunch, she had just been walking out of a coffee shop and crossing the street at a pedestrian crossing when a car came out of nowhere and ran right into her. They took her to the same hospital she worked at, the same place I worked at. I administered her anesthetic myself. It was terrible to see her in such pain. She had multiple fractures and broken bones. The surgeons did all the could, but in the end she would be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of her life. As for the person who had hit her, it later turned out that he had been drunk. He was convicted and spent some years in a prison, but that did not change anything. What was done was done. My brilliant prodigy’s medical career was practically over.

It took months for her to recover enough to be able to move. After that she started on rehabilitation and physical therapy. What is most remarkable that throughout the entire time, and even today, she remained as positive as she had always been and never ever complained. More than a year passed before she was considered in good enough shape to be discharged from the hospital. It was another half year before she found herself a job in the marketing department of a certain pharmaceutical company.

We kept in touch all throughout – sending cards on birthdays, Christmas, and other celebrations of the sort. But I rarely met her through the years after she was discharged; we were both always so busy with our own lives that it was weeks, then months before we could see each other face to face. Every time we met I saw thought that she kept getting thinner and more worn. But we stayed as close as ever.

She committed suicide two years ago without leaving any notes. Her will and last testaments were all in order, she had paid up all outstanding debts and settled all her issues with everyone she had known – family, close friends, colleagues – even me, the last time she met, she had told me that we would probably not be able to meet again because she was going somewhere far away. If only I had known – but what could I have done for her? Her family told me that in her will it said that she had been planning for her death for at least two years, and that no one should be blamed for anything, that it was her own consciously planned decision to die.

She had such a bright future awaiting her, and it was gone in a blink of an eye because of another person’s foolishness which essentially led her to lead her life for another fruitless twelve years before she decided she could take no more and finished what should have happened the moment the car hit her.

Life is never fair.

Hypnotism has been a particularly unique and interesting subject to research on. It is officially called hypnosurgery and the patient is hypnotized to basically ignore pain. On the other hand, the patient does not actually lose sensation. Hypnotherapy is not for every patient; some people respond better to hypnosis than others. I have seen a hypnosurgery process done in our hospital before, where we had an assistant and myself stand by throughout the operation in case the patient made the signal for discomfort, following which we would begin administration of chemical anesthesia. The patient did not, and the surgery was a great success. I believe he was even released earlier than normal and has since done quite well postoperatively.

Before the surgery I met the hypnotist who attended to the patient. He is a very nice young man, very polite and deeply concerned about his patient. Not only does he hold professional hypnotist qualification from the IMDHA, he is also a trained and certified psychologist and owns his own practice with an office downtown. He told me about a number of techniques for control over the mental state which I have since used a number of times when dealing with the various frustrations of life.

Self-hypnosis, or autosuggestion, as it should be properly called, is somewhat similar to the placebo effect, where the subconscious mind is trained to believe in something through repeated suggestions. There are any similarities in the process to meditation. Though the methodologies vary, the mental states achieved are nearly identical.

Adam Lipton, who didn’t drink tea, told me all about anesthesiology over a six hour brunch at a hotel in Gilbert, Arizona. It took me eleven years and two husbands to become an anesthesiologist. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t. Another three husbands and twenty three years later here I am in my office lounge tapping out a post in what is called a ‘blog’ because my present husband’s computer engineer child has managed to convince a firefighter with issues to start her own blog. Certainly the drama will be entertaining. But there will be none of that here, of course.

In this blog I plan to talk about the work and research that I do every day here in the hospital, and perhaps I will mention some personal home matters from time to time as it suits me. I will most likely have little time to update this; certainly I will not have time for this daily. But as a record for posterity of the patients and events that I find interesting, this might be a most helpful tool. Perhaps someday I will elucidate about my passion for brickfilm and the beautiful bansuri. Or what cleaning products make for the shiniest chrome refrigerator handles. We will see.

The part about the refrigerator reminds me of a patient of mine, a number of years ago who was scheduled for an operation, I’m not sure of what type. Possibly it was a simple procedure for the removal of his appendix. My secretary did mention that the head surgeon thought the man was an odd bird, and I should have known that anyone the Head finds strange would be, suffice to say, quite a little more than what a regular person would call completely bonkers. When I first met the patient, whom I will call George, to introduce myself as his anesthesiologist he was holding a live turkey by the neck next to his hospital bed. His wife and children were quite unruffled by everything. In fact they seemed more surprised at seeing me than at hearing the turkey squawk. And by the Lord, did the turkey squawk.

As his anesthesiologist I had to ask if there were any allergies that he might have or any preferences in the operating room. George told me that he was allergic to wildflowers, and requested – well actually, demanded that he have a living creature ( preferably avian) be in contact with his skin at all times during the operation. It was something related to a religion that he professed to which I had never in my life heard of. Also, he told me about a great recipe for turkey butter that I have since lost. Most unfortunate. Apart from all that he was a most charming and well adjusted man. I think I would have liked him better but for all the animal noise near my knee.

In any case, this presented the operations staff with quite a conundrum. The operating room must be as sterile as possible at all times, and bringing in a live creature would certainly invite all sorts of unsavory bacteria into the room, and it would have to be completely sanitized afterward. Not to mention the heightened risk of infection on George’s part and the wear and tear on sensitive hospital equipment from the very abrasive nature of Windex and antifreeze. The solution they came up with was, on the one hand original and brilliant but on the other, a horrific form of animal torture. The surgical team ended up putting a finch (provided by George) in a sanitized paper bag and taping the bag around his wrist with his hand inside. The bird survived, and I think the surgeon ( let us call him Chris) had to have another separate procedure after that to stitch up a number of scars George will sport for the rest of his life on his right hand.

The hospital is a great place to work at, provided that one has a passion for injury and suffering. Or an addiction to the smell of antiseptic, as it were. I’m sure I can tell you any number of persons I have met with a curious fondness for trichlorophenylmethyliodosalicyl. My husband and lovely H are both very fond of Dettol.

But I find that I am rambling on. Well, this seems to have been rather pleasant for me. I will think about doing this blogging thing perhaps a little more often. My therapist, bless her soul, has often said that I repress too much and enjoy too little. I think she’s wrong, of course, but suggestions are always useful.

Until next time, farewell.

Doctor P.