The House Officer

The first week of my house job left me perpetually alert. Adrenaline carried me from bed to bed—recording vitals, escorting patients, assisting procedures, scribbling notes. We house officers did everything. We clerked patients, accompanied our teachers on rounds, and ran a small side laboratory that was as much a classroom as it was a workplace.

Every patient admitted to the infectious disease wards needed urine sugar estimation. Disposable strips were unheard of. We relied on Benedict’s test—a ritual of sorts. Eight drops of urine, two millilitres of Benedict’s reagent, a flame beneath the test tube, and then the slow watching: green to yellow, yellow to orange, orange to brick red. Colour, we were taught, was diagnosis.

On the third day of my house job, that ritual turned on me.

I was working in the side lab of Wards 37–38 when I lit the Bunsen burner, unaware that spirit had spilled and pooled around it. The flame leapt instantly. I was too close. My face felt the heat before my mind registered danger. Instinctively, I raised my hands to shield myself. My shirt caught fire. There was a brief, terrifying confusion—fire where there should not have been fire.

Ramesh Mundle, Harish Baheti, and Nandu Chandak were nearby. They acted without hesitation—doused the flames with a bucket of water and rushed me to the hospital.

I was admitted to the surgical ward on the second floor. My burns were dressed and bandaged; antibiotics prescribed. News travelled fast. House officers and classmates began to arrive in small groups, filling the ward with familiar voices and quiet concern. They stood by the bed, offered words of reassurance, stayed longer than necessary.

Among them was Archana Srivastava, from my own batch—Batch D. Until then, I had barely interacted with her. Yet she came, sat by the bed, and spoke with a gentleness that surprised me. She told me not to worry, that these days would pass, that I would soon be back on my feet, with no scars worth remembering. There was no formality in her concern, no obligation—only an instinctive warmth. In that moment, I saw in her not a classmate, but a sister.

That bond, formed quietly in a hospital ward, endured. Over time, friendship deepened into kinship. She became my Rakhi sister. Years later, when she married Vinod Srivastava—a neurosurgeon trained at NIMHANS—I attended her wedding in Allahabad. Four decades have slipped by since that visit to the surgical ward, but we remain in constant touch, the connection unbroken by time or distance.

My parents arrived soon after my admission. My mother wept openly. My father stood by the bed for a few moments, pale and shaken, then turned away, unable to stay. My classmates lingered, speaking softly, steadying my parents when I could not.

After two days, I was discharged—with bandaged hands and a temporary dependence I found harder to accept than the pain. An intern helped me record blood pressures, write case sheets, and prepare discharge summaries. Ramesh, Harish, and Nandu took turns filling in the gaps, reassuring my mother that I would be fine. Their quiet loyalty carried me through those weeks.

The burns healed slowly. The scars lingered for years and remain faintly visible even four decades later. In those days, leprosy was common, and my father worried that my scarred hands might be mistaken for something else. Relief came from an unexpected source—a family friend who ran Rambharose Hotel in Wardha prepared a special ointment for burns. My mother applied it daily. She also brought home-cooked meals and, since I could not use my hands, fed me herself for two weeks.

I had entered medicine through fire—quite literally.

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The infectious disease wards were a daily education in suffering. Cholera, amoebic diarrhoea, and dysentery arrived in a steady stream. Tetanus, rabies, and diphtheria followed with grim regularity. Watching patients with rabies die was especially harrowing—fully conscious, terrified, struggling for breath. Once, I accidentally touched the saliva of a rabies patient. The price of that momentary lapse was fourteen injections of anti-rabies vaccine into my abdominal muscles over six months.

Tetanus was common in the late seventies. Patients arrived with locked jaws and rigid bodies, muscles arching in painful spasms. Convulsions came without warning. Many required tracheostomy just to breathe. Treatment meant tetanus antitoxin, heavy sedation, and weeks of endurance—for the patient and for us. There was little we could offer beyond vigilance and hope.

The ward itself reflected the limitations of the time. Dimly lit, sparsely equipped, it had no monitors, no ventilators, no infusion pumps. We relied on clinical judgment, hands-on care, and constant presence. The air carried the sharp smell of antiseptic, layered over groans of pain. It was medicine stripped of technology, leaving only skill and resolve.

Diphtheria was another feared visitor. The white, leathery membrane over the tonsils was unmistakable. A swab would be sent to microbiology, and the report would return, almost ceremonially: “KLB-like organisms seen.” The membrane could spread rapidly, choking the airway. Isolation was strict, fear pervasive.

Alongside these wards, we spent long hours in the outpatient department of Skin and Venereal Diseases. Our consultant was Dr. B. S. Gowardhan. Scabies dominated the clinic, treated uniformly with benzyl benzoate, applied generously from neck to toe.

What disturbed me more than the diseases was the atmosphere.

Patients with genital ulcers were subjected to comments that crossed the line between humour and humiliation. Privacy was casual, confidentiality fragile. Questions about sexual behaviour were asked openly, sometimes flippantly, without any attempt at education or counselling.

At the time, we did not protest. We did not even recognise the violation clearly. Ethics was not yet a language we spoke. We learned by imitation—absorbing not just clinical skills but also attitudes, with fear and awe mixing freely. A few teachers, brilliant in their medical knowledge, treated patients with condescension, sometimes ridicule. It was accepted as tradition.

Only much later did I understand how deeply such moments shape a young doctor—and how important it is to unlearn them.

Looking back, that posting taught me more than diagnosis and treatment. It taught me about risk, vulnerability, suffering—and about friendship, compassion, and the kind of doctor I did, and did not, wish to become.

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