Uncomfortable Reminders About Life

There isn't much of a preamble to this one. Sometimes the exposure to a hospital setting just gives you these 'aha' moments that remind you of important things you knew, but had momentarily forgotten.

So let's just get to it, shall we?

There is always a consequence to your actions. Sometimes it's pretty 'straightforward' and it takes just once - a first trial with heroin could lead to a shutdown of your respiratory system, for instance, but often it's not that easy to envision: the seemingly 'harmless' things, like adding a healthy pinch of salt (i.e. another 400mg of sodium) to your meal every day (i.e. 17% of your daily recommended maximum) that can lead to undesirable outcomes a long way down the road.

Life can get derailed at any moment in time; don't take anything for granted. I had a patient who was getting off a matatu (a type of public service vehicle commonly used in Kenya, like a minivan) to go to work, only to trip, fall, and end up in hospital for two months.

People's actions and thoughts won't always make sense, and sometimes you're just going to have to shut up and respect their choices. I've seen patients refuse critical treatment for reasons beyond my comprehension - not cost, nor side effects, nor plain misinformation...just 'no', and we've had to accept that. Likewise, I assume, people will behave just as 'irrationally' in other facets of life.

Life is unfair. If that weren't the case, you wouldn't have to watch a mother care for her one-year-old infant who was born with cognitive deficits and cannot recognize her parents, let alone sit up by herself.

People may hold your hand and offer their 'support', but ultimately, you're on your own. Even if they want to, they cannot take away or lessen the pain of, say, kidney stones. You're going to have to bear that by yourself.

People see what they want to see; you can't impose a certain image of yourself onto others. In the same institute, I have been asked whether I am, in fact, old enough to be in university, as well as been mistaken for a doctor and requested for my input on a certain case. It isn't about me in these cases. It's about the perception of the involved parties.

That said though, people will judge you based on appearances. It's the 101 of all clinical years: look presentable, look professional - or patients aren't going to take you seriously.

Some situations in life will find you completely helpless. Grin and bear is the name of the game. You can try to be kind and supportive to the 22 year old girl who needs a kidney transplant, but if you find the next day that she's passed on, you've just got to learn to accept it.

Oftentimes, people are only interested in what you can do for them. As medical students, we have to 'clerk' patients to practice on our history-taking skills (in all fairness, it can get annoying for patients to have to repeat the story for every student who comes asking), and patients will often refuse to talk to us because there's nothing in it for them. Can't blame them: that's just life.

People can be difficult for no reason, too. There was a patient who would refuse to talk to anyone except one of my friends. Another, after consenting to be clerked for an examination, refused to talk to the student on the day of reckoning. There's no real 'justifiable' reason for any of this, again, it just is.

People will fall short: sometimes their best won't be good enough. One thing we try to strive for is to identify with each individual patient, but it's hard to remember everyone's name when there are easily over 50 patients in your ward. So, as undesirable as it is, we find ourselves discussing what happened to 'the man who fell from the second storey' rather than 'Robert, the engineer'.

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And that is all.

What do you think?

Also, I'd be very grateful if you'd check out the other recent pieces on here- in particular, my responses to word prompts, OR if food is your thing, recipes on raw lentil pizza and avocado cheesecake. (And tell your friends about this space!)

PC: Photo by paul morris on Unsplash