Of doctors and medical exams…

I am not sure about you readers, but I am really afraid of doctors. Really. And mortally. If they are private practitioners, they have this something about their smiles as you enter their chambers, that immediately rings alarm bells in your brain. No - that’s old-fashioned, these alarm bells… My brain goes “Gunka – bleep”, “Gunka–bleep”…. like my son’s toy flying saucer.

And if they are in a government hospital, their bored expressions (Sh** !! Yet another patient !!!) and their “one-prescription-fits-all” approach can make you lose faith, among other things, in God…. (I assume you lost faith in the government too long ago to matter…)

I have this habit of visiting my dentist with clockwork regularity every fifteen years or so. The last time I had a terrible toothache and could barely eat, was also the last time my wife dragged me to the fellow in pretty much the same way my mom had dragged me to kindergarten many years earlier. I was bawling on both occasions…

This guy stuck a steel prop into my mouth and looked around. I could see his eyes positively begin to shine at the thought of all that lucre in there, waiting to be excavated… He gave me an injection on the gums, then said “Excuse me,” and walked away to make a call… I could not hear the conversation, but I am dead sure he was calling his wife to tell her, “Darling, I can now buy all the sarees you wanted for this Puja and the next.”

In the meantime there I sat, my steel-strutted mouth wide open, with saliva slowly starting to drool out as I gradually became jaw-less … Then he returned, the smile on his face was a wide grin now, as he extracted two of my teeth…. The medication followed, and the pain went away….

He had asked me to return two weeks later for the other set of teeth.  But like you all, I do love my teeth, and his wife does not need all those sarees any way…..

Then take the case of this medical check-up I had to undergo a couple of decades ago when I once qualified for a government job by mistake. There were fifteen of us who were hired, then sent off to this government hospital for the medicals. They took all our available body fluids for examination, asking us to deliver the solids the next day. They then told us to return on the third day. There they took each one of us to separate rooms, stripped us down to our birthday suits, and poked and prodded more than my mother ever did since I was this high….

The last doctor had a frown, and I asked, “Is everything alright ?” He looked at me and said, “You guys are all job applicants, right ?” To my nod, he said, “Yes, everything is alright.”

“And what if I do not take the job ?” I asked again, and regretted it immediately, looking at the deeper frown on his face. “Then too, you are fine !!” was his retort, as he muttered to himself, “Why do they keep sending these healthy young fellows to me ?”

Today I sympathise with him – he would not have had much of a medical practice, if all he got to see were healthy young fellows….

Last winter I went to my local physician for a check-up and there was this lovely young thing in the waiting hall. I got to observe her for quite a while before the doctor called me in. He checked me up, commented on my racing heartbeat, and recommended an ECG, which of course, came out all normal because the PYT was no longer in sight and the technician was a tall moustached fellow with the build of a wilted asparagus. There is a thing about these pretty young things, you know, particularly as one approaches middle age….

The most terrible of these physical examinations was the one I had undergo to obtain a work permit for another country…. In addition to all those things mentioned before, I had a separate session with the proctologist, who, though very professional, stuck a fibre-optic cable based torch and camera into you-know-where and displayed the results on a large TV screen for all the lady nurses behind the partition to see…. (I guess he was taking a class at the same time…)

Oh !!! I could have died a thousand deaths if only that TV went kaput…. It did not. All I did was blush, lying there, while he went about it with the gusto of an archaeologist looking for the Dead Sea scrolls.

***

Doctors, like lawyers, call their vocation a “practice”. 

I understand “practice” being a valid description for lawyers because they relieve you of your money without any tangible output, with practiced ease. But doctors ? They are supposed to “practise” on you ??? And are their waiting halls an integral part of their “practice” ? Delayed appointments and unending waits are all part of a grand design by these fellows so that you end up being as resistant to suggestions as a sponge…

What would happen if engineers “practised” too ? Imagine a bridge or a dam being built as a “practice”……. The entire civilisation would be up in arms over it. No, no, that would never do.

Engineers are required to be precise – even if they are wrong. Unlike doctors – right ?

***