National Doctor’s Day: We salute you, doc!

On Doctor’s Day today, we bring you inspiring stories of young doctors who didn’t give up in the face of adversity and toiled day and night to save precious lives. Hats off to their irrepressible spirit!

Rohini Rau

Rohini Rau

Chennai-based Rau is one of the first certified medical clown doctor in India. Dressed up as a clown, she goes about performing therapeutic comedy and puppetry to make her patients laugh, dance and hang on to hope. “We visit government and private hospitals to cheer up patients that sometimes includes those suffering from terminal diseases. It’s a joy to see them crack a smile. Your mental well being has a huge impact on your health. It gives you strength to fight back,” says the 36-year-old, who is also a certified internal and functional medicine doctor. Rau says that doing theatre since her childhood has helped her a lot with improvisation when performing medical clowning. “it gives me an edge and I throw in storytelling. These are very inspiring sessions and make for my most precious memories,” says Rau.

Litika Verma

Litika Verma

The 27-year-old Verma joined the ESIC hospital Faridabad as a junior resident in the ICU. In April last year, she was diagnosed with a rare disease: Guillain-Barre syndrome. “Weakness and tingling in your hands and feet are usually the first symptoms. The sensations spread fast paralysing my whole body. My life changed in the blink of an eye. I was hospitalised for 15 days and was put on oxygen support. Even though I was at home, I couldn’t move my body. It took months of treatment and physiotherapy to gradually stand on my feet,” she shares. What kept her going was the desire to recover and get back to serving people, and relentless support from her family. “I was pretty restless. I wanted to start attending to my patients again. And I wanted to talk about this rare disease that had turned my life upside down,” says Verma. Confined to her bed, she started an insta page @drlitikaverma to spread awareness about the disease . “That phase gave me a new perspective about life and its fragility. I think the experience made me a better doctor,” says Verma.

Vishal Anand

Vishal Anand

The 29-year-old is a general surgeon with AIIMS, New Delhi. When his mother could not find a single screening centre in her home town, Bokaro, Jharkhand to get a mammogram done, Anand had to bring her to Delhi for the test. That’s when Anand decided to facilitate breast cancer screening and treatment in Delhi at an affordable rate and he launched a cancer diagnosis portal, Flavum Health. “Many from remote areas die in the lack of timely diagnosis and treatment. I realised that something had to be done. I wanted to bring something on table that could help people without burning a hole in their pocket,” says Anand. His initiative rolls out an yearly plan at affordable rates, including mammogram and risk assessment. If a patient is detected with the initial stage cancer, Anand bears the cost of treatment. “I focus on patients who do not have financial coverage and cancer puts a huge financial burden on them,” he says. The surgeon also worked in the rural areas of Haryana to help fight anaemia among males in rural India, a rarely talked-about health challenge.

Noor Dhaliwal

Noor Dhaliwal

This young doctor started her duties when the world was grappling with a deadly pandemic. “As a freshly graduated doctor, it was a dream come true to wear the white coat, and be entrusted with responsibilities, but it was also a test to my strength and resilience,” says Dhaliwal, 25, who was posted in the Covid wards of Lok Nayak Hospital, New Delhi. Dhaliwal would be on duty for long hours, enveloped in PPE kits that would leave her soaked in sweat. “No one bothered about physical discomfort but there was constant sadness surrounding us as we witnessed the scarcity of resources and facilities. We also saw a lot of deaths just at the start of our careers Witnessing such helplessness led to sleepless nights and I would keep thinking about heartbreaking stories of patients who could not afford life-saving treatment ,” she recalls. But the sight of suffering patients made her determined to help alleviate their pain. Amidst the challenges, there were moments of joy when some patients recovered and happily went back home to their families. “Those are the moments that kept me going,” says the MBBS.

Raghav Nayar

Raghav Nayar

A liver transplant surgeon, Nayar was posted in AIIMS Jodhpur in March 2020 when the pandemic hit the country and international flights weer banned. When the government evacuated people stuck in Iran, some of them were put in isolation in AIIMS Jodhpur. “The most serious Covid cases were brought to us. There were not any protocols that time, so we made our own basic protocols to deal with the situation and worked tirelessly. There was a severe shortage of facilities and constant fear because Covid was at its peak. It was draining, both physically and mentally But as doctors, we needed to be strong,” says 32-year-old Nayar. “In these grim moments, you sometimes discover your biggest strength. I learnt that grit and perseverance can turn around any adversity,” says the doctor who caught Covid thrice while on duty. Back in Delhi, Nayar is doing his fellowship in a private hospital. “My goal is to set-up a system that could make liver transplant surgery an affordable treatment,” he says.

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