My Wonder Years..

When I was about 8 years old (everything I post about here seems to have happened when I was 8!), my brother handed me a cricket bat and we headed to my backyard. Of the first few balls I faced, I remember tonking one real hard and it got stuck above one of the doors. I think I enjoyed that a bit. These were my first moments with the game of cricket.

I remember the summer holidays when I was 15. The whole neighbourhood would gather every afternoon in my backyard and we would have sessions of 'short cricket'. It was something everyone would look forward to, and those images and times never seem to fade from my mind.

Then there was always "Victory Grounds", a playground near home where most of the local community would gather for sports. Cricket being the most dominant, though some of the louts there engage themselves in a bit of soccer too. I used to frequent this ground often, but somehow broke away when I joined med school.

If I can recollect the year correctly, it was probably 1999, when another cricket crazy friend and I decided to just fool around with the bat and the ball. It would be just the two of us... bowling at batting in turns. As the weeks went by, we were joined by others who had a similar passion for the game. The group that started out as 2, eventually numbered a lot more. (Probably 15 was the highest).

We were joined by people from different backgrounds and different ages. Some were students, some worked. We just knew each other's first names. Nothing much was discussed, and nobody was really interested in getting to know each other very well. Everyone turned up at the ground on saturdays and sundays, and the game was played with a lot of passion.

This passion went on for years. We managed to forge ourselves a team and spent our weekends playing in the dust bowl and sometimes going to far off grounds to play against other teams. The pinnacle being our rivalry with another 'resident' team at Victory Grounds.. who I shall just call .. "The evil H-Colony gang" :o)

What was quite remarkable was, though I spent a good deal of time with these guys, I don't think I knew anyone's last name. I really didn't know exactly what each of them did. I absolutely didn't know where any of them lived! Not exactly the ingredients for a great friendship. Strangely, these basic things did not stop us from having the time of our lives on the field. We all had one thing in common..love for the game, and it bonded us stronger than some other friendships that I have endured.

This team disbanded in 2004 when I had to give up the time for my studies, Most of the guys moved onto other things, but in November 2006, we reunited and are limping our way back to our "days in the sun". The core members of this team remain. The evil H-Colony gang is still there too! (We'll beat em!).

In the years that we disbanded, I realized how a strong passion can create a lasting bond. I know that given a choice, we would do nothing else but put on our dusty shoes and head to Victory Ground. We could ape our heroes, we could release our frustrations and we could leave the world behind when we played over there. It didn't matter if we scraped a knee, crashed into each other or got rapped on the nuts there... it was fun, and will always be.

Everyone has a passion. This is mine...

The end of the innocence...

Its twilight time for my post graduation. If all things go as planned, these are the last 2 - 2.5 months that I would have to work as a post graduate (also known as resident/scut etc).

I did some rough calculations. To earn a masters degree in anesthesiology at the hospital I work at, a resident has to put in about 14000 hours of work in 3 years. That is something like 4500+ hours of work a year. This excludes time spent studying. An average worker in the USA spends about 2000 hours a year working.

The last 3 years have had a huge influence on my personality. I've always considered myself as a mild individual and never expected anesthesiology would be my calling. Since it was the only speciality I could get into, I took it, not really knowing what to expect.

Somehow, humans have this remarkable ability to adapt to the worst of situations. That is how we somehow pick up our lives even after the worst tragedies hit us.. like the loss of a loved one, dealing with disability, or having to put up with a spouse's cooking.

I'm not saying that post graduation in anesthesia was a tragedy...i'm saying it was bloody hard. Perhaps one of the hardest things one can do. Long hours, extreme stress, some crazy colleagues and even crazier superiors.I have worked 32 hours straight without sleep, I have had to deal with the wrath of angry inconsiderate relatives of patients, I have had to tell countless people that their relative (father/mother/brother/sister/son/daughter) just died, I've yelled my guts out at lazy nurses, had to watch in horror while doctors make the wrong medical decisions, and had to deal with some ridiculously stupid surgeons. I've even been sued for someone else's mistake !

But most of all, I realized that nobody really knows what an anesthesiologist does. Its bad enough that patients really dont know what we do, but its terrible that people within the medical profession also fail to understand what we do.

Who is the anesthesiologist?

I could write a book on what we do. Maybe i'll write a blog on what we do. But if I had to put it in a nutshell...

An anesthesiologist is someone who guards life, and will fight hard to see that someone in his care stays alive no matter how bad the situation is.

Its like this... when God decides to shift someone to heaven or hell...they wind up at the hospital in transit (hospitals are like small airports), and when an anesthesiologist steps in the room, God would slap his head and says... "Who let that guy in?"

Despite the the crap i've taken over the last two and a half years, I've realized that I serve in the most dedicated field of medicine there is. Nobody may appreciate everything... if not anything we do... but in the end..

I'm a little proud of what I do.