The Trauma Series

It’s another dull and cloudy morning in Nairobi. The sun has barely cleared the horizon, yet your day is already underway. Congratulations you’ve made it past your pre-clinical years! And for that, you have been granted a lifetime membership at a hospital near you! It’s the first day of your Obstetrics and Gynaecology rotation and you are anything but prepared. This is your first time in the clinical field and to your dismay, you realize Grey’s Anatomy lied to you. The only taste of romance you’ll get will be from your psychiatric patient who has proposed marriage to you five times already. Nonetheless, armed with a lab coat (that provides you entry into literally any and every room) and an alarmingly large water bottle you charge in headfirst.

Medical school is much like Gandalf arriving at your doorstep every day with a new adventure for you to undertake. There is never a dull moment and sometimes it feels like you’re on a rollercoaster where the safety belts are fraying, and the track is on fire. As per the medical school curriculum a student spends, approximately, two to three years in a traditional classroom. Predictable expectations, that have been placed on you since you joined kindergarten, are common hurdles you easily tackle. There will always be homework and a guiding hand laying out your path to learning. In medical school, however, this is cut short as you are thrust into the real world. It is exhilarating to be out in the field. And did I mention utterly terrifying?

My first day in a public teaching hospital as a medical student felt like an adventure.

Everything I was experiencing was foreign to me. From the sight of sanitary, stark white walls to the smell of antiseptic and last night’s vomit still hanging in the air. Your apprenticeship has formally begun, except this is not a smithy and you are not working on metal. No, you are overseeing something a lot more serious. A human life. Not directly, of course, at your level. Your every move is heavily scrutinized but eventually, you will be in charge of some ward which you will be tasked with running efficiently. If it’s a public hospital, then with next to no resources. But for now, you are a student with a lab coat haunting the halls of said hospital.

Studying through my clinical years was a very new experience for me. Being thrust into an inhospitable (pun intended) environment, expected to know a hundred reasons why a man would cough for three years straight was an awakening of sorts. From completing assignments and attending classes a few years ago to asking hardworking Kenyans whether they’ve passed flatus at 6 am in the morning (don’t worry you still get to attend classes and work on assignments) was not how I expected it to be.

Part of the surprise was realizing that much of my learning depended on whether I had the balls to walk up to an elderly man and ask him how many wives he had. It was certainly a lesson in learning how to charm your way into a patient’s heart and most of the time I was met by several rejections. Yet, I never gave up (mostly because I didn’t have a choice) and after a while, you learn how to make a patient trust you in the short time you have with them. It’s quite an honor being given such trust. But I’m sorry Mr. Njoroge I still can’t bring your surgery forward!

But as you go about learning how to nurse a human body back to health, you get to see what it really means to be a doctor. To be involved in the day-to-day workings of your nation’s health care system with you as the worn-out backbone. How being a healthcare provider (has a nice ring to it eh?) is about being compassionate and patient. How it’s like holding hands with your patient as they explain when things started getting serious. How sometimes a little kindness goes a long way in making someone’s journey to health just a bit easier to bear.

It is often remarked upon that medicine is an art as much as a science and never has this rang truer. Being in a hospital is interesting, to put it mildly. From patients refusing to talk to you till you’re reduced to begging to people asking for directions to the radiology department when you’ve spent the past 20 minutes lost. See, it’s your first day too.

 But you will learn, you will learn all the shortcuts in the hospitals, how to cajole a history out of a patient skillfully, and when the nurses’ tea is served. It will take months, perhaps even years of getting it wrong before it finally clicks. Along this journey, you will metamorphosize uncountable times into new versions of yourself, meet amazingly talented and kind people who will help you along, and a deep understanding and respect for your craft.

“Sister, si uniwekee hii shindano vizuri?” I don’t know how to break the news. I am not a sister and worst of all I don’t know what to do with your line. Off to an experienced nurse with you. But this is just day one, one day you will be fixing cannulas like you were born to. But for now, you are an apprentice learning their craft. Slowly chipping away at your hunk of metal till it starts to resemble a sword.

The secret though is terribly cliché: Don’t give up. Even when everything you do seems to be another addition to a long list of mistakes, even when you can’t seem to remember the dosage for gentamicin for the third time that day, even when you get so many questions wrong during a ward round you get chased away. Don’t give up! Keep chipping away at this craft and who knows maybe one day you’ll be coming to us live from a public hospital near us!