Reflections on Medicine and Life by Dr. S.P. Kalantri
“Enough.” It was the only time I heard Mamta Tiwari refuse treatment. For almost three years she had accepted everything that cancer demanded of her — major surgery, chemotherapy, repeated hospital admissions, drainage tubes into both kidneys, powerful antibiotics, pain, uncertainty, and nearly eighty journeys between Wardha and Mumbai. Each time a new complication arose, … Read the essay
I have given hundreds of talks in my life. Lectures to medical students, presentations at conferences, seminars on diagnostics and evidence-based medicine. For all of them I prepared slides. Dozens of them, sometimes. When Dr Pankaj Harkut, cardiologist from Nagpur, invited me to speak on dying with dignity at a physicians and cardiologists conference in … Read the essay
Last week, the district collector called a meeting. The meeting was attended, among other, by local MLAs, MPs, bureaucrats and doctors from the two medical colleges in the district. The second wave had peaked and more patients were seeking hospital admissions than the hospital could provide. ICU beds were at a premium and hospitals were … Read the essay