ALL THINGS MEDICAL

When you ask a young child what they want to be when they grow up the usual answers are a pilot, an astronaut, an air hostess or a ballerina. At least this was the case when I was small.. nowadays I’m sure children have a whole different list!!

After finishing our O levels my school gave us study leave of one week to go and get work experience at a place we would like to make as a career. We had a very good family friend who was a Senior Pulmonary Specialist at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester and he happily agreed to let me get the taste of life in a running hospital. He very kindly arranged for me to spend one day helping on the ward, one day in the pharmacy, one day in his chest clinic, one day in the radiology department and the highlight of my week was one day in the operating theatre. Now he felt that the main OT might be a bit too much of a shock to the system and he had visions of me fainting on seeing all the blood so he put me in the ENT theatre where I saw slightly less gory operations such as a tonsillectomy, adenoids and sinus operations. Mind you they were fascinating and I was hooked!

With this aim in mind I took science subjects Chemistry, Biology and Physics for my A levels as these were the subjects required to get into medical school. Now the fact that I was terrible at all 3 never entered my head and career counselling at my school was pretty much non existent so I went in with all guns blazing and high dreams of becoming Dr Sunita Ruia only for these dreams to shatter when I didn’t

get into Medical college.

So moving on in life I’ve always had an affinity to medicine in some form or the other. In fact at one time, after my marriage, my family had purchased quite a large plot of land in Ballygunge and I was very keen that we construct a nursing home there and we even had an outline of the plans made to see if we had enough space and it was found to be viable. However unfortunately some members of the family felt it was incorrect to ‘make money’ out of people’s illnesses and would thus be morally wrong… my logic was that we would actually be helping people who were ill and providing them with a service but anyway the long and short of it was that the plan was scrapped as were my dreams. Later on in life I had visions of opening a 5 star Diagnostics Centre which would provide all the basic testing facilities such as blood tests, x rays etc but also advanced testing such as MRI’s, CT Scans and many more. There were a number of such places but you literally felt you were at a fish market trying to elbow your way to the counter to get some tests or the other done. You had to hang around in the corridor waiting for your slot and you changed your clothes in little makeshift cubicles in the same corridor. Now remember I am talking about 15-20 years ago… nowadays a number of diagnostics centre’s have come up but at that time there was nowhere that gave you the whole package. However after taking a lot of factors into consideration it was felt that this too was not viable and the plan shelved.

I don’t know if it is a coincidence or what but can you imagine the number of times I have been operated on in a hospital? I am 66 years old and have had 9 operations as far as I can recall. Now my first surgery was when I was about 23 years old so I’ve had an average of about 1 surgery every four and a half years!!! The funniest thing is the place where I was trying to count the number of times I’ve had general anaesthesia… I had a small surgery just over a year ago and I was wheeled into the recovery area and this was where my mind started counting… how random!! When I came back to my room I told Vinay and Vivek my calculations and also that I had decided I wasn’t going to have any more surgeries as I had had more than my share. They laughingly said that if that was the case they would stop paying my premiums for my medical insurance!! I think they have probably forgotten this whole conversation and put it down to me still being woozy from the anaesthesia… but I was actually quite serious!!!

I then started living my dreams by watching any and every hospital drama that comes up on the television. My absolute favourite is Greys Anatomy which is now in Season 20 and I have diligently watched every one. I have grown up with the young medical students who go on to become residents and attendings and so on and so forth. I feel I know Meredith Grey, Bailey, Christina Yang and Webber and I was so upset when Dr Derek Shepherd died. I know that when the heart stops they inject you with 2mg epi and use the paddles to shock you , when they are intubating you they insert the pipe in your throat and say “in”, that a ‘whipple’ is a very complicated surgery and the list goes on!! Qualified doctors must hate me as I have just blandly written what it takes them over ten years to learn but these are how they are portrayed on the television. Now I’m sure that most of the procedures are a lot more difficult in real life but I guess the director of the programme has to take some cinematic liberty to get viewers. Most of you must think I’m rambling like mad but I know there are plenty more die hard Grey’s fans like me!!!

Then I also love The Resident, New Amsterdam, The Good Doctor, Chicago Med and a number of others whose names I’m forgetting. When Vinay comes home from the office he usually catches me watching either a cooking programme or one of these hospital dramas … he always laughs because neither can I cook nor can I practice medicine but then there is no harm in dreaming is there??

Dr Sunita Ruia Goenka would have had a nice ring to it!!!