Syahrir

Bharatanatyam and Medicine By Swetha
 * Descriptive || Topic || Aanalytical ||

Traditional musical instruments and a beautiful voice resonate throughout the auditorium during the culmination of a classical Indian dance debut. As the rhythm and intensity of the Sanskrit music captivate the audience, I dance my way onto the stage with agility and gracefulness conveying the history of a rich culture. Using keen facial expressions along with methodical and rhythmic foot tapping onto Mother Earth, I express eternal devotion to the ancient art that defines my roots. By the end of the dance, the audience becomes awestruck after an exuberant performance. Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance, has always been a passion for me given the precise formations and movements performed on stage. Dance has been an artistic expression allowing me to learn agility, steadiness, hard work, acumen, devotion, and communicative competence: the essentials of a dancer. My passion for learning to dance and understanding more about my culture has been a form of expression I longed to master. I wanted to be able to understand the complexities, and then incorporate these intricate features into my own being. After several years of rudimentary training, learning perfection and patience, I was finally able to express my love by giving back to others. Our dance school produced several performances benefitting the Arts of San Antonio and second-generation Asian Indian children. I contributed to this noble venture by teaching and guiding the novice dancers. I had the pleasure of watching them grow through trial and error and long hours of practice in much the same manner I had. Subsequently, I began to realize the beauty of one of the oldest art forms began to correlate with another art form—medicine. Both types of expression shared not only the mechanistic abilities but also required many of the same qualities from hard work and patience to giving back through conveying knowledge to others. Two years ago during a trip to India, I had the opportunity to see the spark of appreciation that enlightened the villagers’ faces after being treated for their health conditions. My father, a family physician, spent several days in the village providing free healthcare to the locals. He felt a deep desire to give back to humanity by doing charity work in his birthplace community in India. His visits every two to three years were the only source of health check-ups or health education for many of the villagers because the area lacked a medical facility. The feeling of satisfaction in poor and vulnerable patients brought forth by simple acts of kindness such as a medication sample or the power of touch gave me the assurance to become a physician. While I had experienced the splendors that occur in medicine, I knew that not every patient’s case would be a story of success. The summer following my trip to India, I decided to volunteer at several San Antonio healthcare facilities including nursing homes, urgent cares, and hospitals. It was not until my junior year in clinical rotations that I experienced the devastation that occurs in medicine. In my first unit, OR, I witnessed a patient have both of his legs amputated resulting from severe peripheral vascular disease. As the local anesthesia set into his system, his desperate pleas to God and the doctor for this misery not to occur made this first-hand experience even more devastating. Though his hope seemed to be thwarted, his positive spirit allowed him to thank the doctor and God that he was still alive to see his kids and grandkids grow up. After this happened, I kept thinking, “Could this possibly be the worst thing to experience for a junior wanting to become a doctor? Was I in the right field? Is the idea of seeing my own patient dying in front of my eyes a prospect I could withstand?” While the negative aspects of medicine daunted me, I knew within my heart that there was nothing more special than diagnosing a patient’s health issue, bringing forth a new life into this world, or allowing a mother to see her child walk his or her first footsteps. There is a sense of fulfillment in medicine similar to classical dance: a never-ending reach to perfection. In dance there is always more to master and learn just like in medicine, where there is always room for improvement through research and education. This past year I had the opportunity to work on a quality improvement care project in conjunction with the acute care of the elderly (ACE) unit trying to reduce the onset of delirium cases after a patient’s arrival to the hospital. After our team determined the six key onset factors, we were able to teach the staff the importance and long-term benefits of preventing delirium. Keeping the patient hydrated, mobilized, and cognitively intact resulted in the deliberate improvement of delirium cases in the unit. Conducting a quality improvement project enhanced my critical thinking ability, but more importantly, it taught me how the quality of patient care can improve patient treatment. Through my experiences in the spectrums of dance and medicine, I have realized that however diverse both fields might be, the attractive features are the same. Dance is a form of expression uniting me with my roots while medicine enables me to think critically as I reach out to others. My twin passions of medicine and dance have had complementary effects in my life. By enriching myself in a transnational culture, I will be able to communicate with people of different backgrounds and cultures on a personal level while giving them the best possible care. Thus, I hope to bring an open and inquisitive mind, through the knowledge and experiences I continue to gain both in dance and medicine and the compassion and empathy toward others that I have developed in traveling through villages in India to the practice of medicine.