On being HIV positive

If you test to be HIV positive, who would you confide in? 

This was what I was asked during a HIV story telling session, a part of the "Logos Hope - World's Largest Floating Book Fair".

The Logos Hope ship is huge and houses a book fair; the ship visits various ports around the world, hence the name "World's Largest Floating Book Fair".
The ship is docked at the Colombo harbour currently and has over a million books for sale.

In addition to the sale of books, they had this small section made to raise awareness on HIV/AIDS. When you go in, they give you a set of headphones which has a audio story of this guy who battles with HIV.
What's interesting is that the story is told in sections and for each section, you move into a room specially made to suit the setting in which the story is based.

Here's the story in brief:
(Section 1: Hostel room) - Meet Mark, an engineering student who one unfortunate day, ventures out with some friends to a party and ends up spending the night with girls he's met for the first time.

(Section 2: A room custom made into a club of sorts with lights, liquor and beds.) -  Clubbing, drinking, doing drugs and sleeping around goes on to become a habit of sorts for Mark.He does it as a means of escaping the stress from college.

(section 3: Park with a lot of greenery and a bench) - Few months later, he meets this medical student, Sarah, at a park where's he's contemplating on quitting his bad habits... Being with her, he realizes what a waste of time partying and sleeping around had been. She's had a rough past as well and the two hit it off well. He falls in love with her and so does she.

(section 4: Sarah's room) - Few months into their relationship, Mark gets a call from a frantic Sarah asking him to come to her house as soon as possible. The ground below him shatters when Mark discovers that Sarah's pregnant. What's worse is that during the course of doing a full check up, Sarah finds out she's HIV positive.

Mark is confused. He is in disbelief on how this could have happened. The big task at hand is to get himself tested.

(section 5: clinic) Here you hand over the headphones and act as Mark. You choose a placard from a box full of placards. The cards are marked either positive or negative.

The placard I picked was 'HIV positive'.
I was asked if this happened to you, who would you confide in?
 - I was dumbfounded.

Who would YOU confide in?


Perhaps it's because people living with HIV are stigmatized and not many declare their positive status in public, it's hard to imagine yourself in that place.
This is how everything goes wrong actually. We always think, "No, this can't happen to me".But nobody's immune. It's so very important to be aware, to be careful and mindful.

Does life really go on?

I found this interesting poem by Lei a few days back and I'm surprised as how it's managed to linger on in my mind for these past few days.

It's amazing how it's so simple yet carries so much weight and meaning.

Give it a read, please.

I sit and stare
Do you notice me there?
You continue to break my heart,
With each moment we're apart.
I have the constant memory
Of how you're never here with me.

I watch you dance with another man
I sit up as straight as I can.
I force a smile as tears begin to fall
You smile at me as if we've had it all.

I see that you have moved on
But why is it that I hold on?
I weaken as I hear the claps
I smile as you turn your back
I watch as you move on,
It's hard to move on...

I close my eyes and begin to pray
I wish for better days
For without you, I can't go on
But as your pink lips move, you tell me, life goes on...


The story behind this poem, as Lei mentions, is that of a girl sitting at her mother's wedding watching her mother dance away with her new husband. Her father has died recently. Seeing her mother move on hurts her. 
She knows and realizes that life can't stop; it has to go on. But she's in a conflict...

 ~

Now this is LOVE

I've read about the wonders and powers of love in so many of the books I've read; seen it being depicted in movies and dreamt of it as well. Today, I witnessed it in reality.

There was a young female patient in her mid 30s who was admitted to our medical ward. She was a known patient with Systemic Lupus Erythematosis and was in and out of hospital. She's married with two children.
Last evening, she developed a respiratory arrest and due to the unavailability of an ICU bed, she had to be manually ambu bag ventilated in the ward. 

We are a group of 16 medical students working at the medical ward currently, so we were asked to come in groups and help with the ambu bag ventilation.
I and three others were to go at 4am, to take over from the previous shift's colleagues. 

I made my way out of bed and to the hospital half asleep, yawning away and not happy with the early start that was required...but on seeing this young lady lying on the bed partly unconsciousness with tubes down her throat and nose, ECG leads across her chest, abdomen distended due to ascites and the monitor displaying a low BP of 86/50 I forgot my sleep, my tiredness...

The four of us in turns, ambu ventilated her. Few times the BP dropped low to 50/20 and other times the oxygen saturation dropped to 75. Using normal saline, dobutamine and close monitoring, we kept her going in the hope that an ICU bed would be available by 8 am. 

At 6 am, her husband arrived, He went by to her side, gently brushed her hair off her face, rubbed her as if to say, "Don't worry love, I'm here now".He even offered to ambu ventilate her. We however said we're doing our job and asked him to sit nearby ...

...and then in a matter of 5 minutes, she crashed! We did all we could - chest compressions, adrenaline shots, ventilation, sucking out secretions...she unfortunately had already  breathed her last.

This lady struggled but survived the entire night just to see and feel her husband's touch in the morning - this is true love.
The way the husband kissed his liefless wife's forehead at the end, clung to her body and wept like a body ... such strong emotions!

THIS is true love, not the ones created with bouquets of flowers and tonnes of gifts. 

RIP ~

Hats off to women

I just started my first 4 week long Obstetrics and Gynaecology appointment yesterday and I was not at all happy because I just could not connect to the patients.
But today, I felt such a strong bond develop between myself and the patients I spoke to - I am so happy & relieved. I was feeling so guilty yesterday.

Working in these wards full of women is such a good learning experience - I see myself and so many other girls in these women in the ward.

Today, my first patient was a young mother of 26 pregnant with her first baby - she was so excited! The next  was a mother who had delivered the previous night - her eyes beamed with happiness looking at her soundly sleeping baby girl. The next was a mother in her 40th week of pregnancy waiting to deliver tonight - she was anxious yet very excited to welcome a newborn into her family of 3. The last patient was another young mother of 29 who sadly had a miscarriage - she was in grief and was full of questions regarding the possibility of her being able to conceive again.

It's amazing how strong each of these women were - all of the had such touching stories, some of happiness, some of sadness. I salute these women for being able to go through such overwhelming emotional states and emerging out of it stronger than ever!

For someone who isn't really fascinated by pregnancy and kids, today was a table turner of sorts - I felt a baby kick while examining a pregnant mother's tummy, I held a 12 hours old baby girl in my arms and I shared the grief of a mother who just miscarried.

Today, I am more than thankful to everyone who helped me shape my decision to take up Medicine. I am so lucky to be able to feel this multitude of emotions and learn from this wonderful Sri Lankan population!

Happy moment*

If you're in a non medical field and have friends pursuing medicine,  it'd be very common for you to hear your medical friend brooding and complaining about how hectic and stressful work is.

My friends go through that a lot too -very often I complain to them about how exhausted and sleep deprived I am.
No matter how much I love and enjoy the course,  there are times when I get up after measly hours of sleep and doubt if I'll survive the day. (Thank God I've had no episodes of faints and falls!) But it does take a toll on your health sometimes.

These past few weeks have been hectic - not just work wise but also deciding on how many days can you miss from work to have a vacation of a reasonable time with family.

Just yesterday when I had a five minute conversation with a friend (yes, I have to cut it down to 5 minutes) I was wishing that God does some magic and gives me all the time to catch up on missed sleep. And guess what? He heard me! :)

This morning,  I found out that the eye surgeon we're studying/working under is going abroad for a week and so we need not go from tomorrow!  I almost did a small happy dance infront of her when she signed our record books. We finished four days ahead of time which means four days of adequate sleep.


Happily I strutted on to university where there was more good news in store for me!  Afternoon lectures had been postponed!  I leisurely had my lunch with delicious prawns,  tried a new bottled yoghurt, took a short nap and got some studying done in the library.

And now, I'm at home lying flat on bed,  working on this post from a new phone I invested on recently, ear phones plugged in listening to One Direction's Up all night and munching on a huge chocolate bar.
The thought of being able to get up late tomorrow,  the fact  that my tickets are confirmed and that in 18 days, I see my mum - I've got to be the happiest medical student right now :)

They say sharing happiness increases it manifold, hence this post. I was smiling the whole time I wrote this :)

And girls, Michelle Phan has an awesome giveaway. Go over to her YouTube channel and participate!

Have you confronted your dream? Your personal calling?

I've been reading Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" and I agree with Times, full on, on saying that his books have had a life enhancing impact on millions of people.
I've loved this book so much - I might just read it all over again!

Anyway, this post is to share with you'll the Author's Note. Just think about reasons why you think you're on Earth and the things you've done in order to live up to that reason.
With that at the back of your head, just read this abstract: 

What is a personal calling?
- It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth.
Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to confront our own dream. Why?

There are four obstacles.
First, we are told from childhood on wards that everything we want to do is impossible  We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice  fear and guilt.  There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But, it's still there.

If we have the courage to disinter our dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle - love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward, and that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.

Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus  we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn't workout, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse  "Oh, well, I didn't really want that anyway." We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey. Then, we, the warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor  even though we may not understand how.

I ask myself: are defeats necessary? Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people? Because once we have overcome the defeats - and we always do - we are filled with a greater sense of euphoria and confidence  In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight. We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing  eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.

Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there  waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we have fighting all of our lives.

Oscar Wilde said, "Each man kills the thing he loves." And it's true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt.We look around to those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp,went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal when it was only a step away.

This is the most dangerous of obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.

~ Paulo Coelho

Thankful for my sanity

"I hear two people conspiring against me - it's cost me my job, and I'm losing my family".
 "My mother is trying to separate me and my husband and she's told the entire village of her intentions - I can sense it"

These are just two snippets of conversations I've made with patients at the National Institute of Mental Health, Sri Lanka.
I've spent a little over 10 days there with patients from different walks of life. Each one has a different story to tell, each one has a bucketful of problems, each one leads a different life. 

From schizophrenics to depressed patients to ones with bi-polar disorder to heroin/alcohol addicted patients - we saw them all.We got an insight into their lives. And trust me, you wouldn't want to know how it is. 

Can you imagine a person who always hears people conspiring to kill him; but when he looks around - there's no one.

Can you imagine a person who hates her mother because she thinks she's going to kill her new born baby; but the mother is in tears - seeing her daughter become a totally different person.

Can you imagine a person who hates his wife because he suspects her of having an extra marital affair - the wife who loves him to bits and is praying daily for his recovery.

Can you imagine a person who is so depressed that he wants to jump into a moving train and take his life. 

Are you thankful that you have a sound mind? That you are not locked up behind bars in a mental institute?
 I am.
I took my sanity for granted until I visited the institute. Until now, I've lived thinking that sanity is part of life, it's there and will be there. However, it's not. Sanity is as fickle as fickle can be. You can lose it as easily as you lose your handkerchief. 

Coincidentally, I happen to be reading Paulo Coelho's Veronika Decides to Die - a story about a young girl who has everything in life - she's young, pretty, has a stable job, good friends, loving family & boyfriends. But she's not happy & she decides to kill herself by swallowing sleeping pills. Death doesn't come easy - she wakes up to find herself in a mental hospital - she's alive but her heart is severely damaged and she only has a few days to live. During her stay in the hospital, waiting for death (which is so beautifully described by Paulo Coelho that you can actually visualize it) she realizes that every second of existence is precious. She sees life in a different light. 

The book has enhanced whatever I've felt and learnt from what I observed at the mental institute here in Sri Lanka. It has made me feel grateful for the fact that I am alive.
I recommend everybody to give the book a try - it'll be worth it!

I'm glad that this course is teaching me not just Medicine but also morals, various feelings and values of life. 

That's just one reason why I love what I'm pursuing! :)