little sister...

21 September 2007

On schedule for my second hep B shot (thats something i definitely DO NOT want to pick up from a needle stick injury). Like one of my surgery professors emphasised: "If you do get hep B, make sure its from pleasure and not from a patient". Dark humor.
Hep B, by the way, is chronic hepatits, and spreads like HIV, except that a REALLY minute amount of blood contamination: 0.000001ml is enough. For HIV you need around 0.1 ml which is almost a drop.

Anyway, so I was in my apron at pediatrics OPD that morning, waiting for the overworked nurse to find 3 mins to spare to give me my shot.

I saw this little girl there, she must've been four or five years old. She was in a white skirt, and her ringlet hair was short and pinned back. She looked happy, more than happy, she looked healthy. She wasnt smiling or anything, but her face was very.. content. I think she reminded me of me.

I told my friend (he'd come along to make sure i dont collapse on the way back. AS if!) that i thought the kid was cute. He was shocked....having spent more than ten minutes around me, he was well aware that i do not enjoy children the way most normal people do.

The girl's doctor (I'm presuming) came into the treatment room, I was standing just outside. She took the girl in, telling the mother to wait outside. Then she motioned for me to come over. I hesitated, not knowing whether it was me she really wanted. But it was.

I went in. "Are you final sem?"
"No, ma'am, I'm just third sem"
"Ok. Doesn't matter. Stay and help me"
I nodded, but I don't think she noticed. she went and locked the door.

I was nervous. Locked in the Ped Treatment room with a 5 year old patient and her doctor. Most of that made me uncomfortable. So I asked her:
"What do you need me to do?"
"Wait, I'll show you"
She brought out several vials of drugs, needles, cotton, alcohol, etc on a tray.

She extended the girl's tiny arm, found a vein on the dorsum of the hand and said to me "Hold her wrist. Tight"

So I did. The child was looking at me. She dint even flinch as the needle went in. Doc started pumping drugs into her. Was she used to this? I'd expect most children to cry, yell. How was she so confident with her mother not even in the room?

"Nimma hesaru enu?" I asked, to distract her. What's your name.
"Rashmita"

I wanted to ask her more... about school and friends and stuff, but i dint know enough of the language.
The Doc was done in a few minutes, and while she was cleaning up, i asked if she'd do my Hep shot for me. "yeah, sure. but this wasn't vaccination you know"

Of course i knew. No vaccination is done like that...through an IV tube.

"What was it?" I asked.
"Chemo"

Chemo? Chemo. Cancer. Little girl with cancer. Rashmita. cancer. chemotherapy.

"what kind of cancer?" I managed to ask.
"Leukemia"

And she was such a sweetheart. I helped her off the bed, smiled at her and watched her walk out to her mother. I walked out a second later, shaking but not quite.

I wish i could heal.