Intervention for the Mother was the Birth of This Doctor!

 Aai always wanted me to be an M.B.B.S. doctor. My scholastic achievements assured her that I comfortably could be one. Once, moreover, when a rather big sized cockroach entered her ear, attracted as it was by the fragrant flowers she was wearing, a twleve year old yours truly had with simple pincers managed to remove it without any pain to her. She was hence convinced that she had given birth to a great surgeon in the making. Papa would have been very happy if I were to join the civil services. Neither, however, forced their dreams on me, or on Raju and Sanju, which was rather rare those days. Not only did they encourage our choices, they, moreover, supported us in every which way.

Once they started aging, however, the necessecity of my medical interventions became a reality. Often, during my visits from Hyderabad, I used to conduct memory tests for an unsuspecting Papa to prove to him test finally that his cognitive functions were in superb conditions, and that there was not even a distant possibility of any dementia. 

Once Aai started facing the ravages of old age, my latent medical talent emerged as  a quasi-"sambhavami kshane kshane" avatar. All along, I, anyways, had been an avid reader of medical fiction. I loved looking up medical encyclopaedias as an alternative sphere. I wrote a well researched article or two on genomics for a highly respected Marathi magazine. My Wedesday articles for the Hyderabad edition of the New Indian Express were received well by the medical fraternity. As literary criticism necessitated it, I knew my Freud and Jung rather well.

So I could discuss with her physio the exact muscle and ligature involved as if after Gray, if anybody knew anatomy, it had to be me!We bandied terms rather efficiently and effortlessly. Soon syncope and ischmia types became my best buddies, while sorbitrate, vertin (and its exact valency), the m.d (oh, it stands for mouth dissolving!) tablets were my bed fellows. As doctors would anyway say that caretakers had to finally arbitrate/decide, yours truly took it to heart. I soon realised that it is pharmacology that maketh a doctor. G-guru, here cometh thy disciple, I chanted, and once startled an M.D. practioner by casually mentioning that one of Aai's diabetic medicines was an alpha blocker which may not exactly jell with a b.p. medicine he was thinking loudly (to his disadvantage!) of prescribing. The poor old gentleman stared quizically at me as if either me or he or both had lost the marbles. But he had to give in. A look at the strip and, voila, I could locate the medicine. Once a rather famous heart surgeon was trying to convince me why it would be better to go for angiography. He tried to baby talk to me, and most indulgently asked me what I would do if she were to suffer syncope yet again To his utter dismay, I responded quite casually, "why, I would put two sorbitrates of the m.d. variety under her tongue, call the oxygen ambulance, get her partially resuscitated, and get her here." For about three minutes, there was a total silence of what literature calls the pregnant variety.

Not only could  I gleefully bandy terms, quite a hospital surfaced at home. I kept charts of her  blood pressure and the fb (fasting blood sugar) and pp (post prandial) sugar levels with such efficiency that any nurse could easily sub-peona that duty to me. Hypoglycemia, oxygen concentration, temperature gun, all such and many other nomenclatures of the medical variety rolled off my tongue with an ease as if they were long lost buddies.

No wonder then that despite her white coat syndrome, she would not even notice it when I administered her epidermal injections. I taught myself first aid. Once when she fainted near the bedroom door , I tried the chest massage so assiduously and vigorously that she came to immediately, and said in a rather pained but most firm manner, "I am okay". After that encounter of a rather scary kind, there were not any immediate ischemic incidents. I think I can guess why!

 I encouraged her to practice alternative medicine. All types of Pranayams, omkar, the works! She would get bored, not I. She had to mention hasta mudras, books would be by her bedside, charts above her headstand. She wanted reiki, books in English were translated so immediately that the energy flowing though me must have tired her. In her last illness, I learnt how to nose-feed via an R.T. and how to measure urine levels so fast that nurses mentioned my skills to Pooja, it seems.

Her local G.P., cum family doctor, once said that I was her best doctor. From the corner of my eye, I tried to find out if the lady was trying to pull my leg. But, no, she was not. Her comment was genuine and sincere. Yet all this 'fast' acquisition was no use when her heart attack played a cruel hide-n-seek with me. Why, I nose fed elektral to her, and when I came back to raise the bed support so that she would not fall off the medical bed cum bubble mattress in her sleep, the game was over. So badly I lost it that now I know why it is said, cure thyself, doctor!

pratima@M.A. (=medical apprenticeship)