Sunday, Jan 30, 2005
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Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary | New Delhi
By Bindu Shajan Perappadan
HALE AND HEARTY: P. Venugopal, director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, with his student and `doctor', A.K. Bisnoi, in New Delhi on Saturday. Photo: Rajeev Bhatt
NEW DELHI, JAN. 29. India's finest heart surgeon and Director of the prestigious All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, P. Venugopal, took with him his organ donation card, a certificate asking doctors not to resuscitate him in case of any eventuality and a heart full of trust in his "student'' when he went under the knife on January 7 for his coronary artery bypass surgery. The surgery itself was kept a "top secret'' and was known only to two other people -- the operating surgeon and the anaesthetist -- with the rest of the staff seeing their chief only when he came to the operating table, shaved and ready for the operation. The "plot for the surgery'', so to say, was hatched in the Director's office itself on January 6 after a routine check-up and till 7-30 a.m. on January 7, when the operation took place, nobody got wind of it, expect the three people involved -- the operating doctor A.K. Bisnoi and the anaesthetist besides Dr. Venugopal himself. Even the blood match for Dr. Venugopal was sent in the name of the operating doctor and "a ten-day medical leave application'' was handed over to the anaesthetist with instructions to submit it only after Dr. Venugopal's operation. "I went home and slept well, can't say the same about the other two who knew about the surgery. I left home on January 7 without my usual cup of coffee and my servant walked me to the office. I told him to get my breakfast at 9-30 a.m. to my office. Also, the only thing I asked my operating surgeon to do before the surgery was to not get emotional,'' said Dr. Venugopal, who was back at work three days after his operation. Dr. Venugopal's family was told about the surgery only after it was over and doctors and staff got to know about the same after word got around. But for Dr. Venugopal's student and operating doctor, Dr. Bisnoi, the kudos coming his way is only incidental. "I have been with him for 11 years now and have trained under him. Dr. Venugopal was operated in `his' Theatre No. 2. And since I was one of the two people told about the surgery, I felt legally, medically and emotionally liable in case something went wrong. And the fact that nobody knew, came as an added responsibility. The basic idea was to return him to where he was `picked' up from -- the director's office -- safe and in good health,'' explained Dr. Bisnoi, who says he conditioned himself to "treat this surgery as a routine case''. And while Dr. Venugopal, sitting in his all-blue hospital uniform has already performed his first surgery this week, this is how he views his exploration: "I know I could have gone to the best hospital in the world, but this is a unit that I have helped put together, I work with these people and I have faith in my hospital. I couldn't think of a better place to go to.''
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