Remember our Humanity!

Until late last year, I was no fan of Doctors; I was practically on the other end of the scale. I'm sure all of us, doctors included, have suffered from medical incompetence in one form or another. But, like me, unless you get sick, you don't see the beauty of the competence and dedication of medical professionals. 

Nobody, especially me, starts out in a profession solely to help others. I am sure all the doctors and surgeons and nursing staff carefully evaluated their strengths before deciding on their career paths. It simply is imperative that one has to fundamentally care for people, more than the rest of us do, in order to arrive at this trajectory of careers. I have always been a very good student, a good artist and curious about Biology and the sciences. Translated, I was a prime candidate for medical school. Luckily for me, I was self-aware enough even as a teenager to realize that I cannot interact with people that much, and pretend to like them for extended periods. Not customer service material! I had a colleague who used to bang on desks when explaining our product to customers who pay for the actual developers to train them. And get banged on the desk in place of their heads. I am not that extreme, but nearly as bad, at home. At best, I would have been a good underling to Dr. House! Given that self-awareness, now that I have undergone a successful series of hospital stays and more than a few procedures involving dedicated medical people, I am worried about them all.

I remember each caring person just this last year:

those that helped me up,

those who cleaned up my stomach's return product after every transfusion and every sip of water, 

the sisters who made me smile by bringing my preferred non-carbonated water without my asking,

those who gave me pain medication when I couldn't lift my head enough to press the call button,

the night staff I kept calling because the light always looked on and I wanted it off,

the catering nurse who noticed I hate meat with my breakfast and gave me three times the butter and marmalade,

the old night staff who looked in on all the sleeping patients and saw me shivering from loss of fluid and covered me in three comforters,

my roommate - octogenarian and a former nurse, who after her own stroke, consoled me as I sat disconsolate after yet another bout of violent nausea...

And the many others who were kind when I was too ill to notice... how do I say thanks? How does one say I am thinking about you, in a way that matters?

I don't tweet. I see trending #this or #that and fail to see who is being fooled. How many of those hashtags ever translate into any meaningful action? Twitter was originally a beautiful concept; it is now nothing but an empty, useless speaker for the likes of the Trumps of the world. Trump might get Covid-19, Boris Johnson already has recovered. Whether they get it or not, recover or not, millions of the most helpless will and already are getting it and failing to recover. Most of the dead will be the-already suffering. A pandemic is not an equalizer. The already overworked will work more. The already useless will be louder and more powerful. And the rest of us will draw rainbows on our windows and clap at a certain time.

I looked at donating simple, essential 3D printed medical supplies. There was no discussion of possibilities; instead, I got a tutorial on how flawed my idea was. I decided I'd just donate some money directly to the nurse station. At least that way, there could be some use to the people I so badly want to say 'Stay Safe'! I want to tell all the WhatsApp warriors and silly twits on twitter (most of them) to get off their lazy backsides and look at how the dying suffer while alive, instead of complaining about staying home without their formerly, fantastic lifestyles.

It does make me laugh out loud when I see memes about forgetting which day it is and wanting to bang my head on a wall after taking the kids on a virtual museum tour three days a week or overdosing on my small family day in and out. And, yet I always remember to be grateful that I have a family and that it is safe, wherever they are. Just use up all this emotion on something that makes a difference. Choose one caregiver who made life easy: your local bus driver, a station master, a cleaning person, a teacher, a maintenance person at work, or if you are like me - one of the hundreds of people who helped us get better. Sure, I know a few who were inept. But, right now, all I remember are the kind, hard-working and positive people who did their jobs well, just because they decided to. I truly admire that, especially having disregarded anything like their service, precisely because I am not that nice a person. Thank you all!