The Scalpel in My Hands

It has been a few weeks since I cleared my MS exams. On paper, I am now a surgeon. Yet every time I say it to myself, it feels new. The words carry a weight that is both humbling and exciting.

I often tell people that surgery is not just a profession, it is a way of life. Maybe I started living that way long before residency. I remember my biology teacher once telling us, “If you want to be a doctor, you must start living like a doctor.” Somewhere in my third or fourth year of MBBS, I think I began living like a surgeon. That was when the operating theatre stopped being just another room in the hospital. It became the place I wanted to belong.

Residency turned that longing into reality. Three years of days and nights that often blurred into each other. Of standing in the OT for hours, of rushing to the ER at odd hours, of learning to stay calm when nothing felt certain. There were moments of exhaustion, but also moments of victory like the first knot tied without fumbling, the first wound closed end to end, the first case completed under my own hands. Small milestones to others, but for me they were proof that I was slowly becoming what I had always dreamt of.

There were days and nights when I was pushed beyond what I thought I could handle. A patient in distress at midnight, a call from the ward just as I was about to close my eyes, a complication or a case that needed quick judgment with no time to hesitate. Not every outcome was what I wished for, but every experience left me wiser than before.

And now, when I stand scrubbed, gown and gloves on, I still feel the same nervous excitement I once did as a student. Only this time the scalpel is no longer in someone else’s hands. It rests in mine. That is the difference this journey has made.

The degree is only a milestone. The real journey stretches far ahead, full of more challenges, more learning, and more opportunities to grow. But this moment, "the scalpel in my hands", is one I will always carry with me.

#OffToSomethingGreat