You and us, or I and them
There comes a time to take a stand
The wheel is watching all; it keeps on turning
I’m penning down a lot of thoughts recently. I s’pose that’s because I’ve been moving in so many directions, my thoughts linger on a bewildering combination of things. I’m communicating with people across 4 different time zones, a long-over due music album review has finally been completed, and I’m training a kid for her first outing without me, the prospects of which doesn’t altogether reassure me, considering that I was left hiding in my room for a week, nursing some bruised ribs, when I had to bail her out during our last excursion. All in all, February has passed by so quickly, I hadn’t even noticed that its already March. At least the effects of my pneumonia are finally going away.
It gets exhaustive sometimes. How much strength do you actually have to spare for other people? Then again, what better use could you possibly have with your strength? This isn’t an entirely rhetorical question, but I try my best not to delve too much, lest I get into another existentialist funk.
Nobody, I think, was particularly interested in the visit to the Royal Courts of Justice today. I slept at 5.30am the previous night (or rather, earlier in the morning) and I didn’t have the energy to muster up any real social concern about whether people cared anything for my oratory or debating prowess (or the lack thereof). Why the heck were we reading off scripts and organising pseudo-debates in a courtroom anyway? I only fully woke up when the tour was over, and all the disinterested students left, leaving only John and I to sit in with Sally at a real court case. Now that was an awesome experience.
A cardiac surgeon seemed to be appealing a case brought against him by the NHS for negligence. He had caused a patient to die while he was performing some heart surgery on him. The barristers were wrestling over the various experts’ analysis and coroners’ reports; the patient possibly died due to a bacterial infection transmitted from the surgeon via micro-perforations in his gloves. The surgeon was out of practice for some time, and had just underwent re-training through the hospital’s “re-entry programme”. Much debate ensued about the competence of this surgeon and the alleged shortcomings of the re-entry programme. It was a big case, and the atmosphere was nothing like what any legal drama or movie had portrayed. It was real, and extremely fascinating. I’m going to try and find the original case that led to the appeal if I can.
It struck me that my notions of being able to help people by becoming a lawyer were always quite vague. I assumed that I would find out more at university before deciding what would best suit my ideals. Seeing the barristers at work on this case made me feel that the fruits of their labour could be quite impactful. A person had died, and these people, no matter who they were representing, were the ones most directly involved in the process to ascertain the most credible cause, and to decide on adequate redress if necessary. The larger question of whether hospitals might need to uphold higher standards when re-training doctors is also an important issue. You can’t say that’s not meaningful. This is something good to take away while I prepare for double exams in the ensuing weeks.
**It appears I’ve gotten a lot of the facts of the case mixed up. Admittedly, we didn’t sit in on the trial for a very long time, and its difficult to understand what’s going on when you don’t have any prior knowledge of the context. Still, my feelings about the experience remains unchanged. And the case is still definitely very interesting..
Softly Questioning 