A practitioner’s life is usually dull and dreary. More so, of a busy one practicing in a non-metro city. The daily routine of mundane work is killing and robs the charm life has in store. Sometimes you do get interesting cases that may land you up in some bizarre and embarrassing situations quite inadvertently. I have few such incidents fresh in my memory.

One fine morning, I got a 2-year old child accompanied by his father who was terribly upset by the constant bad odor emanating from his hands for last few weeks. The child had undergone a battery of sophisticated investigations at many centers without any relief. On detailed examination, I noticed something stuck deep in his right nostril though there was no outward sign of any nasal problem. The child used to rub his nose frequently by back of his hands owing to constant irritation and the deposited secretions over dorsa of hands were source of the bad odor. A visit to the ENT surgeon who pulled out a piece of rubber-foam put an end to the miseries of both.

In yet another bizarre case, I had to examine a 12-yr old boy who was having spontaneous ruptures of skin at many places all over the body associated with oozing of fresh blood for last couple of days. This was quite a horrifying sight. Frankly speaking, I had never come across such a case earlier in my life. On interviewing the parents deeply who were quite naturally in a state of shock, I found the child was the only male child of the entire business family and consequently, he was pampered quite a great deal and almost fit to the description of a spoiled brat. The very sharp incised nature of the wound made me suspicious of something unusual. On interrogating the child alone with my own methods, he gave in and disclosed that he was doing this with a sharp knife unsighted by his parents in order to harass them who were not giving in his demand of buying a new bike!

Now, this is an altogether different situation that I had to confront with. A young adolescent girl hailing from a poor family was under my treatment for patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) since her early childhood. Considering her financial background, I was always quite caring, supportive and even got her operated at a cardiac center of a premier institute at very nominal charges. The girl used to visit me along with her mother regularly since she lost her father during infancy. For last few visits, I noticed she was flashing smiles and waving hands while parting. I was perplexed. One day after I finished examining her, she simply slipped a piece of paper beneath my prescription pad. The content of the paper left me stunned and shocked! She had proposed me and threatened to commit suicide if I were to turn down her offer of marriage! No need to describe the travails I went through to douse off this seemingly erupted volcano. Probably, she mis-construed my affection, devotion, extra-attention, and generosity for some altogether different reasons and propositions. And I also failed to keep a tab on her growing-up and changing meanings of her glances and the peeks despite attending several discourses on adolescent’s psyche and behavior. A lesson of sort for life- it is good to show concern, care and compassion but avoid becoming too intimate and involved particularly when interacting with adolescent patients of opposite sex – even if you have a fast receding hairline and on the wrong side of forty!

Though I could come out of these messy affairs unscathed, but quite candidly, the end results may not be as ‘benign’ and as ‘uneventful’ as were in my case. Now it is in the hindsight for you to decide how much you value your idleness and monotony in your office practice. Any unforeseen ‘twist’ may have consequences well beyond your control. And well beyond redemption.

Vipin M Vashishtha,
Email: [email protected]