Redefining Emergency Medicine
Can you imagine the lakhs that all the pharmacies, the labs, the hospitals are losing during this lockdown? Do you realise that the loss is because you haven't been going for your regular check-ups to the hospitals, you haven't been going for your regular investigations to the laboratory, or may be some of you haven't been buying the regular medicines as there are no new prescriptions being written; there are no investigations being written, there are no admissions that are happening. How is it possible that a hospital which would usually perform roughly about a hundred ultrasounds a day, around a hundred odd investigations a day, 50 CT scans a day, and many other investigations and procedures, are in the past 10 days not doing even 1or 2 of them? What is happening here? When has medicine or medical science stopped being an emergency? Since when has emergency gone out of a hospital all of a sudden? What is really happening here? Have you given it a thought?
We need to realise that life goes on. Emergencies are created by man. Emergencies have been marketed to you. Emergencies have to be redefined. As you would have noticed during this lockdown period, most of you would have had some reason or the other to go to a doctor, but you would have delayed it by a day or two and you got better on your own, or with a few home remedies. This is what 70% of the Indians living in rural areas, who have no access to medical care, do. They need to travel 20 kilometers if they have an emergency, you are learning to survive like them during the lockdown.
Nature has made our bodies so wonderful that nothing goes wrong with it; even if something does go wrong, most of the time it takes care of itself, you just need to give it time to heal. We need to understand our body and let nature heal it, we need to let our energies balance, and heal us. Fear has been marketed so much to us that we are scared to give our body time to heal, and we rush to a doctor to get investigations done and start on medication, without giving our body a chance to heal.
Didn't we survive the last 10 days? Just like how you would have survived if you were living in a rural area, where there are no medical emergency services available? Didn't you survive without going to the doctor? Even if you had a little pain, you managed it; like people in the village would do, and you got better in a day or two on your own or with some home remedies. But if there was no lockdown what would you have done? You would have rushed to the doctor, got it investigated; you would spend your time, money and also worry about it. Isn't it time that you realise that life is very simple. We are the ones who make it complicated.
All we need to do is, just believe in the wonderful system that nature has given us that knows how to take care of itself. We need to stop interfering with it. You are interfering all the time.
If your periods are delayed you medicate, if your periods are early you medicate. If your daughter doesn't get her menses by a particular age you medicate; if it doesn't stop at the age of 50, you medicate. If you will get palpitations after a particular age you medicate, you get breathless when you climb stairs after a particular age, you medicate. You will lose hair, you will put on weight, you will get constipated, you will not get sleep... for all these you medicate.Your blood pressure is a little above normal you medicate; your sugar levels are slightly above normal you medicate!
You are 75 years old, you will get age related conditions, though not causing any disease in you, yet you medicate. An average Indian lives for 69 years, your being alive itself is a miracle, but at 75 you don't want to appreciate the fact that your living itself is a blessing and a miracle. No! You want to medicate!!
Medications should be taken for DISEASES. What does a DISEASE mean? It means you are not at ease. Why not medicate our body when it complains, and it is not at ease and not medicate ourselves because the lab or the hospital thinks that we need to be medicated.
-Dr.Manoj Kuriakose