Month: March 2021

Your Sunrise Inspiration …. Find the good….Jesse Owens

| Chandru Gidwani
Quote of the Day
Simple Truths
sunrise inspiration
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“ Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it. ”
~Jesse Owens

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Dr. Tripti Guladia….An Inspiration …A Dedicated Doctor during Covid-19

| Chandru Gidwani

Trupti Gilada: Medicine during covid-19—the healing touch without the human touch

June 15, 2020

The barrier that personal protective equipment creates between healthcare staff and their patients has changed the emotional and psychological dimensions of healing, says Trupti Gilada

Rarely in human history has any phenomenon instilled such a fear of human contact to the extent that we are seeing with covid-19. And perhaps never in medical history have so many caregivers felt at so much risk from the people they are caring for. This pervasive apprehension of being infected while caring for people has changed the emotional and psychological dimensions of healing.

Before this pandemic, a typical patient who was admitted to hospital, irrespective of his or her illness, always had a relative or friend who accompanied them or who regularly visited during their hospital stay. The presence of loved ones, and their emotional support during a hospital stay, can often help enhance recovery. Yet a patient’s time in hospital is also filled with other everyday interactions that help them feel tied to life and the people around them.

As a doctor, I loved chatting with patients on subjects beyond their illness. After all, the healing touch is not just limited to physical examination and prescriptions. It often included spending a few extra minutes holding the hands of an old lady, reassuring her that she would be back home to play with her grandkids, or patting the young boy to cheer him up when he misses his friends. Our nurses would regularly chat with patients during their shifts, and by the end of a patient’s stay, the nurses would often know great details about their lives, ranging from their favourite food to the family dynamics at home. Even the facilities staff who came by to clean beds or pick up the garbage would often stop to recap the cricket match that India had won the previous day.

All in all, those pills and the intravenous drips flowing in are not the sole things responsible for healing a person; the human touch has a vital role in keeping patients’ spirits up during tough days.

This very integral part of caring for patients was taken for granted by both doctors and patients alike until the pandemic hit us. In the covid-19 era, everyone who enters to see a patient with covid-19 is covered from head to toe, with the personal protective equipment (PPE) acting as a perpetual reminder to the patient that they are a health threat to other people around them.

The PPE is also a constant barrier to the very essence of human communication—facial expressions and touch. The “How are you doing today” smiles and “You will be better soon” grins are literally masked. The pats on the back and holding of hands are less frequent and even when they happen, they often feel “plastic” thanks to the two layers of gloves. With the eyes being the only visible part of the caregivers’ faces, the patient often feels as if there is no face that they can recognise among a sea of masks; it is all just muffled and distorted voices. And even when these voices are present, it is often only for brief “clinical” conversations revolving only around their illnesses; there are no everyday pleasantries or casual banter. Hesitant to prolong the duration of any exposure, doctors try to keep interactions short and to the point. Moreover, the extremely uncomfortable PPE creates more than a physical barrier to conversation, which inevitably sounds more impersonal and forced.

From the patient’s perspective, the most challenging part is that she or he has to go through all these tribulations without seeing a loved one throughout their illness. A patient recently described his hospital stay to me by saying that “each day seemed like a week.” Although video chats with family members or access to social media can lighten up parts of the (non-critical) patients’ monotonous day, the overflowing information they come across about the disease and the guilt of having possibly given the virus to people they live with keeps them constantly anxious.

To help our patients combat their feelings of social isolation, we often encourage them to interact with each other, where they can often find solace in their shared experience. It is heartening to see them build new bonds with each other, at least partly filling the voids described above.

Fortunately, we are able to see most of our patients return home after recovering from their illness. Our hospital thought of a beautiful way to ensure that patients’ hospital stay ends with a pleasant memory. As these healthy people finally step out of their wards, their caregivers greet them outside, this time without the protective suits, and present them a potted plant as a reminder of how the healing touch was always there with them, although they may have not sensed it. My first patient to get discharged was a pregnant lady who failed to recognize me when she first stepped out. As I (re)introduced myself and gave this metaphorical plant to her, I felt a sense of completion myself—an inexplicable, uplifting feeling that I will never forget.

While we all wait for our lives to normalize, the one thing that I hope for as a doctor is the return of this “human touch.” I hope to witness it again in all its forms and with all its wonderful power to help heal my patients.

Trupti Gilada is an infectious diseases physician managing patients with covid-19 at the Unison Medicare and Research Centre, Masina Hospital and Prince Aly Khan Hospital in Mumbai, India.

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Kindness….Pritha Ricoy

| Chandru Gidwani

Toss Understanding, and Come To Me As Kindness

by Pritha Ricoy

As a communications major, I recognize the irony of my existence; communication has been the most frustrating part of the human experience for me. I’m sure many people share this challenge!

When I think about how diverse we are as people (our likes, our dislikes, our genetics, our karma, our life experiences), it’s no wonder to me that most people find it difficult to communicate. We’re living in such different realities a majority of the time!

Understanding others requires us to be completely open to a different reality- at the very least, in that moment of conversation. Not to mention, many times, we’re bumping up against each other’s “blind spots.” That is to say, there are still aspects of ourselves that we are unaware of, and they’re constantly interacting with aspects of others that they aren’t aware of.

When I think about it this way, it seems like there is barrier after barrier that keep us from understanding each other.

But, there is a universal language that we can always use in communication: it’s called kindness.

Kindness carries a vibration that can be felt. And sometimes kindness isn’t a word, but a smile that simply says, “I acknowledge the Divine in you.”

For a long time I thought that kindness in conversation meant seeking to understand, or at least willing to understand. But we don’t need to understand each other at all to be kind…

We don’t need to understand each other at all to be kind.

A lot of judgment and meanness is a result of trying to figure out why someone isn’t conforming to our reality. It’s worth examining for ourselves why “our” reality is the one people should conform to.

Ultimately, it might be helpful to toss understanding where our kindness is at stake. Kindness should be the bottom line, or the north star, in every interaction. Kindness requires humility— the humility to know that we are not more right than anyone else. The only thing we can do is to seek clarity in God for our own thoughts and actions, and practice kindness with others.

And with that, I share Paramhansa Yogananda’s prayer from his Whispers from Eternity:

Come To Me As Kindness

Will that day dawn for me, O Divine Mother, when uttering Thy name will bring floods of tears, to inundate the droughtland of my heart and burst open the dark gates of my ignorance? Oh, then, in the lake of my gathered tears will grow the lotus of luminous wisdom: All darkness in my mind will be dispelled. O formless, all-pervading Mother Divine, come to me in the form of tangible kindness! Take me away from these shores of millennial sadness.

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