21/05/2025
Long story but worth reading!!
Being an ENT surgeon is amazing, but it's also brutal at the same time.
It demands precision and patience.
I still remember this young unmarried girl from a rural area of Chhattisgarh coming to me with a swelling on the left side of her face, filled with doubts and fear about the disease. She had a pleomorphic adenoma (benign tumor of the parotid gland). I explained the surgical procedure to her and told her there were chances of her having slight facial paralysis after surgery, but also that removal of the disease was necessary. She trusted me and got operated. It even made news in the newspaper.
I feel that being an ENT surgeon will ask everything of you, but it will give back in ways you can never imagine.
In the second scene of this story, I see a beautiful young newlywed girl wearing a shiny green saree and cute mangalsutra in her neck, entering my OPD with a big smile, sitting next to me with lots of confidence, as if she knows me (but I didn’t know her). She shows me the scar on her left side of the neck. Oh yes, it's this girl I operated on more than a year ago for a tumor in the parotid gland. She had disappeared for a year, but here she comes, happy and without any complaints.
A patient remembers your name not because of what you prescribed, but because you listened when they were scared.
Surgery at its core isn’t about knowledge; it's about connection. You can memorize every textbook, ace every exam, master every procedure, but if you can't look into patients' eyes and make them feel seen, heard, or safe, you have missed the point.
Patients don't want to know how much you know; they want to know how much you care.
