Doctor - a zigzag journey

Part 35 - The Body and Soul

Background: 2004 – 2005 (Age 37 - 38 years)

"Help! Come to help in the shower room please!" the voice with a sense of urgency.

We rushed to the shower room and found an elderly patient was struggling to hold onto an AIN's shoulder to stand up; the wheelchair slid away; the AIN trying to find her balance, reaching out to a handrail as she called out for help. We did arrive in time to give our helping hands. The help was appreciated. Lesson learned – how to help a patient to transfer in a safe manner (i.e. safety to the patient and the care provider). Aris is always helpful. He taught me the skill in caring for the elderly residents including how to dress them, shower them, and feed them.

Oh, we were to update the "residents' daily bowel movement chart" at the end of the day. BO for bowel opened, and BNO for bowel not open. In the midst of recalling and updating the chart. Gwen called out repeatedly: "Jesus, come to help me!" Having checked on her, we knew that she was fine and the callout was echolalia. I jokingly told Gwen, "Please give Jesus a break, you have called Him several times today. We are here to help when you need us." We focused on getting our job done. In the end, we completed a list of BO BO BNO BO BO BNO. It meant something to the doctor who looked after the patients. We did our part. It was time to go home.

*****

Completed a rotation in surgery, I moved on to do a term in psychiatry. Mental? Yes, mental health.

"KC, come with me to do a ward round," Dr. Rutherford suggested.

"Sure," I replied.

She was a psychiatrist.

"Go to see Mrs. Whitehead, then present to me," she directed me to the ward.

Mrs. Whitehead was very depressed and she was suffering from insomnia for many nights.

"What kept you awake, Mrs. Whitehead?" I asked in the consultation.

"A lot of things going on in my head, I can't turn it off," Mrs. Whitehead replied monotonously.
I looked at her. Her melancholy look nearly froze the entire conversation. I plodded on to get as much information as possible from her. (For the sake of the patient's confidentiality, the name of the character was changed and the details of the consultation were not included here.)

I presented the case to Dr. Rutherford.

"The diagnosis is melancholic depression," I concluded.

"That's right. Mrs. Whitehead has a lot of stressors in her life, she is ruminating over the stressors while she is so depressed that she has no energy to do anything. The situation is like a car got bogged down in the heavy mud, though the driver's foot is on the accelerator, nothing much is happening physically," she illustrated.

Well explained!

The experience in the psychiatry ward was spooky at times when I saw patients who had full blown schizophrenia with strange hallucination and delusion.

"The devil has big eyes and long hair. When he stares at you, your heart will jump out of your chest," a patient X said in a surreal voice.

That sounded absurd! But, the psychiatrist had taught me that I shall go along the line of the conversation to find out whether the patient had suicidal or homicidal ideation. It would be a negligence if this ideation was not explored and acted upon.

"What has the devil told you?" I asked as I looked into the patient's eyes (I might have seen the reflection of the devil in his eyes, I thought).

"He hasn't spoken yet," he replied as he scanned the surrounding.

"Where is the devil now?" I asked.

"Behind you," he said as he signaled me to turn back and look.

Goosebumps were all over my skin. 

.............

At the end of the day, I left the psychiatry ward. I cycled back to my hostel. I had moved to another cheaper hostel which was like a shed. The elderly landlord loaned me a bicycle and his grandson's tweety bird helmet. I cycled uphill and downhill. The journey took about twenty minutes. I reflected on the conversations in the psychiatry ward and concluded that the body and soul are one inseparable entity. The body needs the soul, and the soul needs the body to live in. Don't they?

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Notable quote:

 "Put your , mind, intellect, and soul even into your smallest acts. This is the secret of success." Swami Sivananda