By George Jacob
Kochi, June 21, 2022: As the country observes Doctors’ Day on July 1, my tributes go out to a young doctor. She is a student pursuing Diplomate of the National Board in Anesthesiology in the hospital I work in. Being a student in a busy department, leaves were hard to get. Nevertheless, she had to attend her friend’s wedding in Hyderabad.
Her friend had been a sheet anchor and an omnipresent source of succor in times of odds. She considered it her duty than formality of friendship to attend the wedding of her all-weather friend.
Once leave was granted much to her glee, she booked her flight tickets to Hyderabad in a giffy. Moreover, no woman would let go an opportunity to visit the City of Pearls and to walk by the Charminar hand-in-hand with her husband, not many days having passed since her own wedding.
After an enjoyable, yet tiring wedding, she flew back to Kochi.
Airborne, it seemed like another uneventful flight back to books and training under her teachers and senior mentors to anaesthetize patients. Soon commotion from the rear of the cabin followed by frantic calls for ‘ a doctor on board’ over the address system by a distraught airhostess woke her up from her reverie, which she had slipped into.
Conscientious instinct had her volunteer. She was led to the rear of the cabin by anxious cabin crew. She noticed a man propped up on pillows and lounging awkwardly across three seats made into a ‘bed’ by adjusting the armrests and gasping for breath. Fellow passengers who crowded around him were shooed away.
The sight did not look very encouraging to the greenhorn, who had only watched her teachers resuscitate patients in ideal environs of a hospital. But never on a flight! Neglecting the butterflies in her stomach, she decided to take control.
Words of her boss ‘you save a life, and you save the world’ echoed in her ears in that moment of reckoning. The cabin crew toiled to place the available oxygen mask on the man in distress. But, she had no idea of his oxygen saturation, a crucial parameter in such emergencies for dearth of a pulse oxymeter.
She knew the next vital requirement was to secure a needle or cannula into a vein to administer drugs. The cabin crew scurried away to search for a cannula. With nothing seemingly forthcoming to save this apparently sinking man, she collected important and helpful information.
Through labored breaths he said he was a chronic kidney failure patient on regular dialysis. Hailing from Hyderabad he was travelling alone to Kochi where he resided. She now had an inkling of the cause for the man’s distress. Excess fluid might have flooded the lungs of this man with renal failure.
She had to give him a diuretic (a drug that flushes out urine), not sure how well his failed kidneys would respond to the same. Finding a vein to stick a cannula in the man’s arm blotted due to pent up fluid she knew, was akin to finding a needle in a haystack.
She needed good light to locate a vein. Fellow passengers already back around the scene of the ‘drama’ helped by shining their mobile phones. Tightly encircling his heavy forearm with her tiny left hand, she located a vein. Using the light from phones of helpful fellow passengers, she thanked her lucky stars as she pushed a tiny cannula the crew managed to find into the vein.
She secured the crucial cannula in place with a crude sticking plaster provided by a crew member. Before she could celebrate her first victory under duress, she considered it prudent to ensure availability of the drug in those not-so-ideal circumstances. She personally searched the medicine cabinet for the drug with the crew’s help.
Lo and behold! The crucial drug was found among vials of numerous other drugs. Discovery of the drug had her answer in the negative to the captain’s enquiry from the cockpit about the need of an emergency landing.
With prayers on her lips, she pushed the drug.
Instructing the crew to continue administering oxygen, she turned to what doctors are supposed to use in such circumstances, more than drugs – words of comfort, encouragement and hope. When she told the man still breathing heavily that he will be alright, she prayed it wouldn’t eventually be a lie. She collected the phone numbers of his family, who was unaware of the ‘drama in the heavens’. The numbers helped the crew establish contact with his family.
Staying put by her patient, she was relieved to notice his heavy breathing had eased. He looked comfortable. Landing safely completed, the young doctor caught the sight of ambulances approach the taxiing flight which carried a sick man. Medics from the ambulances rushed into the airplane as it stopped on Kochi International Airport’s tarmac.
The young doctor was relieved to hand over her patient, who resembled an oasis of calm to the medics who took over his care. As he was wheeled away on a stretcher from the aircraft to a distant ambulance in which his anxious family awaited to receive him, he did not forget to turn around and smile at the young doctor who had saved him from certain death in circumstances not ideal for medical heroics.
A tired Doctor Naveena deplaned resting her head on the shoulders of her ‘non-medical’ husband oblivious of his wife’s ‘guardian angel act’ in the heavens and its significance. She dedicated the cheers of fellow passengers who had gathered at the door to wave her goodbye to her teachers who had instilled in her a lion’s heart, necessary skills and an unfaltering mind capable of taking right decisions to save lives under duress.
(Doctor George Jacob is a Consultant Surgical Gastroenterologist at Lakeshore Hospital, Kochi, Kerala)
Wonderful writeup and congratulations dear doc.. happy doctor’s day to all the super heroes
Great service and presence of mind. The writer should atleast have mentioned this heroine’s full name