... or how I may never see the light of heaven.
Despite all arguments that there may not be a heaven (though there may be a hell) or there may not be both and we all die only to be reborn as boll weevils or salamanders, or we just die and like Mozart, decompose or like Newton, disintegrate, let's assume for sake of argument itself and for sake of this post there exists a heaven and a hell, ruled by God and the Devil... respectively.
And that each of us has a personal heaven and hell, not the generic boiling oil-pearly gates pictures that some of us have been led to believe. For instance my heaven would involve wine, women and song and hell would be a joint filled with goody-two-shoes dressed in white with harps playing Coldplay or some such. I'm assuming the drift is being got. So this post deals with how contrary to everything I try I'm just not getting to my heaven.
Those of you who've seen the movie Constantine, where Keanu Reeves tries to play a exorcist who's sentenced to hell because he attempted suicide but was revived and the Good Book says that all suicides attempted or successful are condemned to eternal damnation without relief, would have realised that the movie was a waste of time. I didn't and am probably one of the ten people who actually dug (digged?) the movie. Anyway so he decides to become an exorcist to do God's work on earth and send every wayward demon back into hell so that he maybe allowed entry to heaven. Of course he also realises that if he fails, he's going to go to 'a prison where half the inmates were put in by him.' Life's a bitch, init?
In a very similar vein doctors I do believe have been sentenced to purgatory the minute they enter the hallowed halls of medschool. No amount of reviving dying people, wading through body fluids, staying up days on end, for pittance of a remuneration is going to change that.
Why? Simply because no amount of slavery can condone our inherent or developed insensitivity to the world at large. Our patients are the single largest source of humor in our lives. Well most of our lives, I have the Provider to give close competition. The jokes that get cracked when a patient is anaesthetised, being operated, in the midst of the OPD, being given CPR (yeah even then), while being discussed; are sinful in the average person's mind. That collective idea of sin overshadows the collective goodwill that we may ever get. The average person is often referred to in my book of life as the muggle or mudblood. Which in itself ensures a year or two of the rack. Let me show you how it works.
Take for instance the auto driver who was assaulted by 3 people for asking for '1 1/2 meter' post 11pm. He had a bottle of brake fluid (empty) stuffed into his nether. When he came to the hospital the first reaction was that he'd have put it in himself. The next reaction was that every nurse, ward boy, anesthetist who was involved in this man's surgery was laughing their heads off. Now if that wasn't bad enough his case with photographs and the bottle itself was presented at conferences and generated equivalent amounts of laughter there too. I could see the Devil ticking off names.
Or how one gentleman sauntered in to my out patient one morning and began to wax eloquent about how he was an Ayurveda specialist attached to ESI or something and he had this one wonder drug that would cure all kinds of colds, allergies, skin conditions, etc on daily consumption for 45 days. So after patiently listening for close to ten minutes at the advertisement I ventured to ask him what his problem was and he replies in the most sheepish voice I've heard, "Hernia." And I almost fell off my chair laughing. Not openly and though my initial response wanted to be, "Why don't you take your pill and see if it resolves after 45 days..." I ended up keeping a straight face and advising surgery.
Or the 23 year old with erectile dysfunction who was advised to watch porn and wank, or the 30 year old complaining of sterility when he hadn't been staying with his wife. Or the... these just go on.
So i wonder in the face of such terrible odds how can we ever be forgiven...
Despite all arguments that there may not be a heaven (though there may be a hell) or there may not be both and we all die only to be reborn as boll weevils or salamanders, or we just die and like Mozart, decompose or like Newton, disintegrate, let's assume for sake of argument itself and for sake of this post there exists a heaven and a hell, ruled by God and the Devil... respectively.
And that each of us has a personal heaven and hell, not the generic boiling oil-pearly gates pictures that some of us have been led to believe. For instance my heaven would involve wine, women and song and hell would be a joint filled with goody-two-shoes dressed in white with harps playing Coldplay or some such. I'm assuming the drift is being got. So this post deals with how contrary to everything I try I'm just not getting to my heaven.
Those of you who've seen the movie Constantine, where Keanu Reeves tries to play a exorcist who's sentenced to hell because he attempted suicide but was revived and the Good Book says that all suicides attempted or successful are condemned to eternal damnation without relief, would have realised that the movie was a waste of time. I didn't and am probably one of the ten people who actually dug (digged?) the movie. Anyway so he decides to become an exorcist to do God's work on earth and send every wayward demon back into hell so that he maybe allowed entry to heaven. Of course he also realises that if he fails, he's going to go to 'a prison where half the inmates were put in by him.' Life's a bitch, init?
In a very similar vein doctors I do believe have been sentenced to purgatory the minute they enter the hallowed halls of medschool. No amount of reviving dying people, wading through body fluids, staying up days on end, for pittance of a remuneration is going to change that.
Why? Simply because no amount of slavery can condone our inherent or developed insensitivity to the world at large. Our patients are the single largest source of humor in our lives. Well most of our lives, I have the Provider to give close competition. The jokes that get cracked when a patient is anaesthetised, being operated, in the midst of the OPD, being given CPR (yeah even then), while being discussed; are sinful in the average person's mind. That collective idea of sin overshadows the collective goodwill that we may ever get. The average person is often referred to in my book of life as the muggle or mudblood. Which in itself ensures a year or two of the rack. Let me show you how it works.
Take for instance the auto driver who was assaulted by 3 people for asking for '1 1/2 meter' post 11pm. He had a bottle of brake fluid (empty) stuffed into his nether. When he came to the hospital the first reaction was that he'd have put it in himself. The next reaction was that every nurse, ward boy, anesthetist who was involved in this man's surgery was laughing their heads off. Now if that wasn't bad enough his case with photographs and the bottle itself was presented at conferences and generated equivalent amounts of laughter there too. I could see the Devil ticking off names.
Or how one gentleman sauntered in to my out patient one morning and began to wax eloquent about how he was an Ayurveda specialist attached to ESI or something and he had this one wonder drug that would cure all kinds of colds, allergies, skin conditions, etc on daily consumption for 45 days. So after patiently listening for close to ten minutes at the advertisement I ventured to ask him what his problem was and he replies in the most sheepish voice I've heard, "Hernia." And I almost fell off my chair laughing. Not openly and though my initial response wanted to be, "Why don't you take your pill and see if it resolves after 45 days..." I ended up keeping a straight face and advising surgery.
Or the 23 year old with erectile dysfunction who was advised to watch porn and wank, or the 30 year old complaining of sterility when he hadn't been staying with his wife. Or the... these just go on.
So i wonder in the face of such terrible odds how can we ever be forgiven...
