A Stethoscope's Tale

Symbols have meaning. Like the police officer's shiny badge. Like the fireman's helmet. Like the Marine's dog tags. Each conveys a certain meaning attached to it, a certain indefinable sense of self and identity.


Damn.. where did I leave my stethoscope now?
Like the legendary Rod of Asclepius and the ubiquitous white coat, the stethoscope has long been intimately associated with the medical profession. Shockingly enough, I've had mine for close to a decade. Has it actually been that long? I just recounted the years and it's pretty close ( and I am seriously aging, folks ).

Not long after we entered medical school, the Littman sales team arrived with their boxes of equipment and their usual spiel - which none of us actually bothered to listen since it was obvious that we'd buy it all anyway. After all which doctor ever lived without a swinging stethoscope? When the goods arrived, the hyper-enthusiastic medical students swarmed over them like crazy bees to precious honey and it took a while before I even got mine, after stepping on a few toes and breaking a few wrists.

Some of the wannabe doctors played around with it, perhaps trying it on for size, but I didn't touch mine till I reached the relative privacy of my dorm room. It was only then that I took it out of the box and stared at myself - and that shiny new symbol - in the mirror with some faint surprise. Hell, made it almost official that I really was going to become a doctor. Goodness gracious. Before that it was all dull, dry lectures and equally boring textbooks so the very novel idea hadn't really sunk in before. Me a doctor? You gotta be fucking kidding me!

Reading my blog, you'd expect my stethoscope to be a flashy gay pink with gold sequins and red feathers but it's actually a boring conservative navy blue. Never felt any real need to stand out in the crowd here since my frequent uncharacteristically loud rants already do more than enough to gain attention.

Still, the faithful thing's been with me for a while. Can almost recall every little sha la la la and every dub dub dub that it gifted me with. Loyally stuck with me through the unimaginable horrors of medical school to the brief nightmarish episode of living hell that we call housemanship. Even when I first returned to my hometown, it came along with me strapped to my travelling bag.

Even had it along during a trying Chinese New Year when I had to drag it out to use on an ailing neighbour who had developed acute pulmonary oedema throughout the night. And that one time I had to attend to a roadside injury when I was flagged down by the paramedics. Till recently actually when I started functioning partly without my own stethoscope since we had several on hand at work ( don't even ask me about ear infections ). Still, it was placed carefully in my backpack that I carry to work.

Then today I took a curious look while unpacking and realized that the diaphragm was hanging loosely from the stethoscope, flailing about like a pathetically broken limb. Thought of falling to the ground, raising my hands to the heavens and singing an aria to my devastating loss but I settled for a single wail, pregnant with feeling. Isn't it funny how we gain sentimental attachments to the oddest things?

It would be simple enough to do a little botched up DIY job with plaster and cast but I think it's time to retire the faithful old soldier. Place it up amongst my precious mementoes in the glass teak cabinet.

What the hell. Maybe my next one would be fuchsia with gold sequins. Wonder whether Littman makes those.