Uncertainty

I watch Grey's Anatomy everyday on Zee Cafe. Mainly because it deals with medicine, surgery, patients, hospital and doctors. I like that field and wonder many times if I actually should have tried to get into medicine.

Anyway, today's episode showed a guy with a 9 year old son. This guy came to the hospital because of chest pain which he wanted to pass off as heart burn. He wanted to get home to his son - the son who wanted to go for a football game. Since the doctor insisted he got an X-ray, which led to another scan and finally a CT Scan. He got serious (coded in medical terminology) during the scan & was taken for emergency surgery. Before the doctor's could do much, his aorta burst and he bled to death, right there on the Operation Table. He died - just like that - within 25 mins of being admitted for mild chest pain! The helplessness that the surgeons felt right there is something I would never want to experience in my life. (Ellen Pompeo as Meredith Grey is brilliant)

I know what I was watching was fiction, but these things happen frequently. We read about some of them but they never happen to us. There is a family waiting back home, totally unaware of where and how you are. What would happen to the son who was just told by his daddy that he'd come to pick him up for the football game and then to be told that his daddy is never coming back again! As I saw these scenes unfold on the television, I sat there stunned, almost on the verge of crying. Maybe because I felt bad for the son, for the guy, for the doctor who tried so hard & who dint want to give up.

I realised how much we take life for granted. Even in a city like Bombay, where terror attacks are so common, we just live. We never stop and think that each day of life is a gift. We should do that, if not daily, at least often enough to remind ourselves of how important this life is.

In the end...God Bless all the doctors...selfless ones...the medical profession! :)

- 19 Aug 2011