The Clinical Experience

As someone who has lived and breathed this city for the last twenty-two years, something which still amazes me is the innovativeness which the Karachi bus drivers display when it comes to decorating their buses. Their motto seems to be “The gaudier, the better” and they seem to follow it religiously.  Travelling in these garish contraptions is an interesting experience though not always a pleasurable one by any means. But the fare is cheap and so am I, and it was either that or wait two hours for my sister to pick me up after a long, tiring day so the bus it was.

It had indeed been a long day. The ward we have been posted to this month is about a mile away from the campus so its going to be a long march to and fro. On the bright side, I’ll hopefully lose a pound or two which is of course always welcome. Its a nice ward, newly constructed, leaving us all reasonably impressed  after the horror stories we had heard about the mess  that the government hospitals generally are.  The welcome we received was unfortunately kind of depressing. A young woman was being led away by a man, probably her father, weeping uncontrollably, wailing “Hai meri maan, hai meri maan” (Oh mother, Oh mother). It was pretty obvious either her mother was very sick or very dead. Turned out the latter was true as about five minutes later, a body draped in a white sheet was  taken away on a stretcher.  My first five minutes into my first clinical experience and I was reminded how inadequate I really am in dealing with the finality of death.  How exactly do you approach someone to tell them that someone so dear to their heart has died? Is there ever an easy way of doing this and is it something  I’ll take in stride say, five years from now? I guess only time will tell. For the moment, I just have to hone my bedside manner and of course prepare the list of Urdu equivalents to some of the medical terms because its highly unprofessional trying to remember the Urdu word for dyspnea hovering over the patient (not to mention highly embarassing).  

So that was it. My first day in the Medicine Ward. And what better way to end a long day than by riding a Karachi bus in all its kitschy glory?  Unless of course you are riding a kitschy Karachi rickshaw.