Saturday, April 25, 2009

Doctor, Doctor -nostalgia about the clinic

Some of the possibly most amusing moments in one's life happen at the most uncommon of places like a doctor's clinic. Reliving nostalgia in this post by listing amongst the most memorable ones I have had so far:
  1. The visits to the dentist's clinic are possibly amongst the most memorable for me personally. It probably has to do with having literally most of my milk teeth forcibly uprooted over a 8 year period including high school. These sessions resulted in my screaming my lungs out at the dentist as he picked up his artillery and effectively reducing the patient count outside in return for the mostly imagined pain he inflicted. The positive point of all tooth extractions was the ice cream that followed :)
  2. Also ever heard of a patient who decided to carry a flask of filter coffee everytime she visited the dentist (for barely an hour) and offered the same to the bemused dentist who then titled her kaapi maami? Well that was my grandmother.
  3. The family doctor was another favourite. The countless times in school when yours truly was down with fever could be classified in two ways (i) which saw me being hopeful and very sincerely enquiring with a heavy heart whether I could go to school (while fervently praying for the opposite with normal diet) (ii) which saw me plead that I was ok and be allowed to go for an excursion, or school trip... In both cases a pleading sad mournful face did get better results :P
  4. The long wait at the clinic when I would count the mosaic tiles, check the patterns and hop across the alternating tiles used to be quite boring despite these tactics. Other favourite activities to pass time were to observe and decide whether all the others were more sick than you or not, and then to guess whose token number would come before yours.
  5. Can never forget the instance where my mother decided to inform the doctor of my habit of self medication in case of cold/fever and my resultant subconscious expression which included my trademark raising of my eyebrows warning him non-verbally even before he expressed his disapproval.
  6. There were these detailed explanations I used to give the doctor of how precisely I felt when my throat was choked during cold and his bemused reaction as he possibly concluded that hypochondriacs come is small age groups also. While the reactions made me doubt my analysis, my explanations did finally have some effect since he once specifically asked me whether I experienced one of the points I mentioned. Needless to say the patient in me was jumping with joy at being vindicated.
  7. My present doctor in Mumbai who adviced my mother to frame her haemoglobin report since the count was perfect also deserves a special mention.
  8. Last but not the least my dermatologist who told me without any provacation not to google a specific ailment and work myself up about it since that was very common in educated youth and would do no benefit to the patient. Made me realise that dermatologists also psychologically analyse people while providing solutions and how being tuned with developments in other domains can be used effecitively in one's line.

1 comment:

prk said...

point 2 awesome!