Onlookers

A year ago, during the presidential election hoopla, I started a post about the significant others of significant people, and discarded it. What had made me start the post at that time was Michelle Obama, the voice of sanity behind all the staging. I think by now, things have been said ad nauseum about the first couple of the United States and I will choose not to add to it, no pun intended. However, what does bring a somewhat related topic to mind is working at the ICU for five weeks.

The ICU is always drama. If real medicine resembles the unfortunate medical TV shows anywhere, it would be there. Lots of scrubs, harassed residents, cussing, codes, "Bring the crash cart!" calls, life saving and death. Most of the time, especially when one is a part of the drama, its hard to get perspective. However, at the end of twenty four hours of being on call, someone else takes over. Then, like I said a year ago in another post, one gets a chance to look back at the previous day. Last month, with the slight added luxury of being a resident and not a harrowed intern, I had the chance to evaluate a little more. What impression do I carry with me from nine thirty-hour calls? Its not how many people we shocked with electricity, not how many people we dialysed urgently or how many died, even. Its the people with the amazing family.

The weird aspect of the ICU is 'amazing' means so many different things depending on the situation. The patients are on so many machines that they don't look like actual people. The family is what makes them seem real. This brings to mind the husband of a woman with really bad H1N1 influenza, whose husband put pictures of her in the room, so we could see how much of a real person she was before she got ill. I shy away from being 'senti' as we call soppy sentimentalism in India, but sometimes, I have realized lately, it is almost justified.

The meaning of the word 'amazing', like I said, does differ with circumstances. It sometimes represents the grittiness of a daughter who decides her mother really would not want a tube down her mouth and a machine breathing for her. A son, who played classical music for hours on the violin for a dad who was unconscious, is one of the biggest heroes I have seen. The doctors and nurses who work there constantly and continue not to despair, appear great to me, the person who just passes through there for five weeks a year.

Sometimes, it is not even anything outlandish like the above instances. It is just the parents, husbands, wives, sons and daughters who come in day after day, and peer at their loved one through the glass doors, who see the person behind the tubes, who must be so scared when they see so many frightening things being done to that person. The strength of these people amazes me.

I do not think the work of a doctor in the ICU is the ultimate test of a good physician. It is one way of making a small difference. However, I do think the circumstances there are such, that they separate love from its imitation, and that, in spite of the bad timimg, is a beautiful sight.