Of falling sick, my Mother and Doctors…..

“Never lie to a doctor and a lawyer” goes the saying for they are life lines to our existence. I have not yet had an encounter with a lawyer, but doctors… yes they were one of the most ineludible part of my life since childhood. My mother used say that I was a “sookkedu neracha kotta”(a basket full of diseases), as I was allergic to almost everything around and fell ill at the first drop of the rain falling on my head.

The truth was that I loved falling sick for the extra care and attention that she gave me when I was ill. Keeping apart the weakness and the nausea, fever was more about the warm milk, rusk and mouth wateringly cooked, sugar coated bananas served in my bed.

A usual fever or a bronchitis attack would be cured by my mother’s home remedies and the warmth of her love; she has a special gift to sense my pain. Every time I lose my breath in the middle of the night I hear the “tick” sound of the stove lighter to heat water and the “Thud” sound of opening the home remedy for bronchitis, but when things went really bad, I was taken to a doctor. The pediatrician was a kind man who prescribed only edible medicines, i.e. pills that one could swallow without difficulty and syrups that had a pleasant taste.

There were also doctors that I despised back then, one among them is the is the most distinguished doctor in my place, who later saved my life twice, once when I was completely down with bronchitis and another time when I caught jaundice. Another one was the dentist who found pleasure in heartlessly pulling my milk tooth’s out. Good Goddess!!! I used to yell my throat out every time we visited a dentist. The dentist chair was my kryptonite… I fought vigorously to avoid the torture chair. My father had to sit in the chair to hold me steady.

Every time I recalled the dentist’s chair it reminded me of the Saw movie for some reason. Yes there is positive side for everything and for a dental appointment back then it was the comic book and the ice cream that I was bestowed upon. Later I devised my own “less pain” method to pull my tooth out, though a very bloody business; it spared me the horror of the masked, grim guy who resembled the Nazi torture expert.

Far away from home, falling sick is the worst scenario as I am beyond the warmth of father’s hug, the super natural healing power of my mother’s home remedies and friendly doctors of my home town. Perhaps the most intimidating place is the college dispensary and its indifferent doctor who wisely diagnosed jaundice as a “B- complex/ vitamin deficiency combined with lack of sleep”. He is more dangerous than the disease itself.

By the time I reached home I was weak with my eyes as yellow as gold.I heard the doctor who treated me back at home for a high level bilirubin, telling my dad that the doctor at the college dispensary must be a real idiot. I try my best to stay away from diseases and that dispensary these days, with sympathy for the unsuspecting victims like the boy who went to the ICU for a contaminated drip.