Brave Young Hearts - Lessons In Courage of A Medical Student And His Young Patient

Samuel was a first year clinical medical student with his normal human feelings intact. He felt sorry for this 13 year-old female patient, one amongst several patients he had been assigned to by the senior registrar in his unit. He was charged by the senior registrar to know every clinical detail concerning all the patient's assigned to him.

Senior registrars are amongst the most senior doctors that run a unit of any particular specialty medical discipline. Clinical medical students rotate from unit to unit amongst the different specialties and currently Samuel was in the Cardiology unit of Internal Medicine.

And here he was feeling sorry for this 13 year-old female, who suffered from a disturbing heart condition: Rheumatic heart disease. She had to sit upright most times at the edge of her bed, lightly struggling for breath while contending with swollen, tender joints.

Over the next few days, Samuel had clerked his patient, consulted her case file and generally updated himself on her current medical management plan, with all recent laboratory results known to him. He hadn't been found wanting by any of the junior or senior registrars in his unit.

In that short while, he had met her parents and had come to know her brave smile whenever he walked into her bay. She occupied the bed by the window in the four-bedded space that was each bay. Hers was a ward of four bays; a 16-bedded ward.

On the last evening that Samuel was to be in that unit, he was back in the medical hostels struggling with a trivial thought. Should he buy his brave little female patient a little gift of Polo peppermint or should he not. As trivial as this decision might seem, Samuel felt a little fearful when he thought of presenting his gift. His apprehension, as unusual as it might seem, wasn't unrelated to what the Staff nurse or Matron on duty might think if they saw the gift-giving act. Also, what this act might mean about himself. Would it mean that he had become too soft; too sensitive and sympathetic towards his patient? Too immature to practice medicine courageously?

Samuel went ahead and visited her ward that evening, presenting his little female patient with the gift of a Polo peppermint. The next day, Samuel had moved on to a new specialty unit along with his medical student colleagues of the same team. Pre-occupied with new medical training challenges, he soon forgot about the case of the 13 year-old female with Rheumatic heart disease.

His next posting was at the Morbid Anatomy department and a month or so into this posting, Samuel walked into the autopsy room one morning to witness yet another of the first few autopsies he had begun to see and learn about. A few colleagues had already surrounded the autopsy table; the pathologist, their instructor, talking on as he demonstrated. The skull and chest cavity were already opened up with the containing organs sectioned.

Five minutes or so into the demonstration, Samuel, who had been observing from the head-side of the autopsy table, slowly adjusted his position around the table to gain a different view-point. He saw her face.

Later he wondered how he managed to stay calm, even as a slow shock ran through his body as he continued to stare silently at her face. It was the 13 year-old.

So, she died, he thought - of Rheumatic heart disease. She died.

Samuel never forgot.

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