There are certain things that need to be kept in mind while visiting your friendly neighborhood doc. The do’s and the don’ts! Each do and don’t is the moral of a certain story, an experience, that has either given the doc a headache and made him count his blessings…..repeatedly. Or has made his job tolerable and the patient’s experience bearable and relatively pleasant …..if not altogether cheery.
So the do’s are:
REMEMBER all your complaints/symptoms….. or at least most of them. Any symptom ….. however irrelevant you might ‘think’ it to be, may be vital. So you just tell …… and leave the ‘thinking’ part to your doc ….. it his. Any pain that seems to have fallen in love with you. Or chills that are not related to the horror flick you saw last night. Or a numbness that is not a sleeping limb. Or the tingling that has nothing to do with watching Katrina Kaif in a swim suit!J Any allergies…… like any medicine that might have given you the runs to the loo……or made you look like you have had a date with bumble bees…….or made you puke-ish….or worse ……caused you breathing trouble.……please remember. Any worm passage in …..you know ….poo(p). Any insect sting …..like wasp, bee. Any infestation like lice, fleas, ticks, mite. Any animal bite….. like dog, cat, horse, bat, pig, mice or any other. Also recorded are pigeon, parrot, ducks, camels, cow, goat! (It’s a big bad biting world of our feline, canine, bovine, porcine, equine and avian friends!!) Any addictions………….smoking, drugs, alcohol, and censored one night stands…………DO remember.
SPEAK UP. Tell…... Explain….. Elaborate….. Yakkity-yak if needed. Don’t worry. Docs are good and ‘patient’ listeners. J Tell what you remember. Keeping it to yourself will not cure it. And however competent your doc might be…… he surely cannot read your mind!
SHOW…. Any sign that you feel is related to your illness. Any rash that you think is recent and not related to mosquitoes or bugs or nappies! J Or swelling that has cropped up overnight. Or discolored patch…..lighter or darker …… or having no sense of touch….or is intensely itchy.
And now the don’ts.
DON’T REMEMBER all the infirmities that you have EVER suffered from….in your whole life till date!! Please limit to the ones that are giving you trouble at present. If there is any other info required regarding past illnesses, family history etc etc……….the doc will ask himself. Don’t relate past illnesses to present ones. This is the doc’s job ………and believe me he is quite competent to do so. (This does not apply to genetic disorders like hemophilia, thalesemia etc or chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension etc.)
DON’T SPEAK UP FOR ETERNITY………especially irrelevant talk……that yakkity yak should not be irrelevant …..something that is ‘not at all’ related to your present condition. You are only eating into some other patient’s time if you do so. And the other patient might be suffering more than you are! The doc is not interested in what soap you watched last night or what color suits you or where you do your shopping from. But he might be interested in what you ate last night or how often you eat out or whether you have a water filter at home or what sort of fabric you should wear or what cosmetic and jewelry you should avoid. So take a few moments to think before you engage your (24 X 7 busy) doc in meaningless chatter. Last but not the least……….take appointment with some doc who understands your dialect! If you go and speak Bengali to a non Bengali speaking doc then you first need to get your head examined!
DON’T HESITATE TO SHOW the exact location of sign/symptom. But for goodness sake show it on 'your' self………..not on the doc’s body. Missed my point? Well ……if you are hurting YOUR arm, touch YOUR arm to show where it hurts…..not the doc’s! Because the doc is OK, thank you very much! Most importantly….if you are a female visiting a male doctor ask for a female nurse or attendant to be present while you are being examined. And vice-versa. It is your right. And the doc is wrong if he is not doing so.
So ........ have a nice date with doc!
PS: The use of ‘he, him, his’ for doc in the above article is purely for the sake of continuity and not any gender
discrimination. So all my feminist friends, please bear with me.
3 comments:
Great post dearie!
The way you described the biting world is indeed hilarious! Human bite is also there...silence of the lambs types :)
Do write something about rights of a patient...like the one you mentioned in the end.
More importantly, keep writing.
Tina
That was a good one on do's and don'ts.Put in a lighter vein,i believe it would be of much help to many.I deeply appreciate your effort at putting down a much needed write-up in an interesting manner .keep up the good work going.
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