Hello everyone!
So I am back again with another blog but this time I am writing to you after 72 hours. I have taken 24 more hours to come back and talk just because there have been some problems which I have faced in the duties which we have in Corona Clinic. So, I will straight away get to the point that for the past 72 hours I have been pretty busy as in the first 24 hours I was posted from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on regular duty hours in my department. The next 24 hours saw me doing my first duty in the screening clinic in which I am supposed to sit wearing personal protective equipment and swab all the patients which come as suspected cases. Before, when I was in touch and described that we underwent a lot of training still when I reached the clinic yesterday I found out that there were many discrepancies in the training which the staff posted there had been getting.
When I reached there yesterday I observed that there was no coordination between our department and the department which is supposed to make sure that the staff in COVID-19 clinic is trained. Obviously, I cannot discuss all the intricacies of the problems I faced because I am an employee in an institution and it would be unwise for me to go into details of all the faults. All in all, I would like to say that we boast of being the fourth best undergraduate medical college in this country still I felt that we lacked in many of the basic amenities which should be provided to healthcare workers like PPE and separate areas for donning and doffing. When I saw what has been happening in our hospital despite the fact we have volunteered to make our institution as COVID-19 1 for Government of Karnataka I understood what would be the plight of the institutions who do not have enough infrastructure and motivated individuals like us. It actually made me realise that even good training can fail if not executed in a coordinated manner. It will be wrong of me to say that on reporting the issues which happened during my duty were not rectified or are not under the process of being rectified.
To be very frank I did not expect the kind of good response I got today from my faculty and the faculty which is responsible for the organisation of the clinic. We went for rounds again and made sure that all the deficiencies which were noticed yesterday are taken care of once the next set of postgraduates come for the same duty. I almost wasted 36 hours in this that is the 12 hours of the duty and 24 hours today. Hence I am coming back to you after 72 hours. The most happening thing in the past 72 hours was the one which I mentioned above. Apart from which I had a six-mile run and also was surprised by one of my seniors singing :). There has been a constant increase in the number of cases which are coming out of India which can be attributed to two factors. First that the screening capacity in India has increased tremendously as compared to before. The second is that there is community transmission of the disease in some parts of the country. Despite this, there have been many disheartening news articles describing how people are running with stones or sticks in their hands to make sure that doctors get out of their community as they think that we are responsible for spreading this disease in India. To them, I just have to say one thing that is - "F*** off". To you who have doubts about us for spreading this disease in this country, I would say "F*** you too". I know if you read the previous two lines you would feel that this is going to turn into a rant blog about my anger towards the crowd which is not respecting my profession.
Let me assure you that it is not a rant blog but a normal one describing what I've been feeling for the past 3 days because I really do not care for the approval of the people who are less educated than me in my subject. I even do not want anyone's approval to tell me that if I am a nice man or not, because I know who I am.
Let me be very clear about one thing that I don't say that you should respect us no matter what because even in our profession we have people who are arrogant or do not behave properly with relatives of patients hence the provocation of anger in the relatives. Still, if the crowd believes in superstition or it believes that all the doctors are wrong and take the support of violence to express their views I would say it is the worst thing you can do to any human being let alone the doctor. Then we have also received a few good news like we have been able to reach a point in Kerala where the flattening of the curve might start soon. In Rajasthan, we have controlled and are about to reach a state stage where the number of COVID-19 cases which are appearing every day might start to fall. These two states have set an example in front of rest of the nation i.e. the states which are failing to control COVID-19 spread due to various reasons like inefficient lockdown or bad management at the community level and the states which are just turning even symptomatic patience away because their made-up criteria does not allow them to take samples eg. Haryana. So, there is a mix of emotions in me right now as there have been so many things happening at a very fast pace for the past 72 hours. In respect to my studies, I have been pretty slow for the past two days and hope to catch up soon as I will be having a free day tomorrow and I'll get a lot of time to catch up on the backlog of my studies. The one thing which I have also wanted to discuss with you was about my run. The day before yesterday my run was not very good as even in that 6 miles my heart rate was mostly above 160 bpm and I could not reach the maximum pace which I was aiming at. What I found out on analysing was the reason for my heart rate to be high was consumption of coffee just an hour before my run. Coffee is known to cause tachycardia even in human beings who just at rest and working on computers. That tachycardia combined with the tachycardia of the run made sure that my average heart rate stays above 160 bpm. The second reason which I found out for my not so great run was the consumption of food from outside the hostel which resulted in a lot of flatulence. So my advice to most of my readers is that when you are starting to jog or are in the middle of an extended period of exercise make sure that you eat good, sleep well and do not consume anything 3 hours before your run.
I am also pleased to announce that I will be starting another blog which will mainly concentrate on my regular runs and the strategies applied during those runs. Although I do not have enough time to start it right now, soon I will be coming up with it and will be announcing it. So, guys, this was my day 14, 15 and 16th. I hope you enjoyed reading it. Meet you on 18th. Be safe.
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