Today a calm and collected man walked into the OPD.I had seen him on an earlier occassion and had started him on oral hypoglycaemics.He entered my OPD and he said he had come to test his sugars and he had been off the medication for the past five days.My first reaction was to pounce on him for not having taken the medicines as prescribed and secondly I would have hit the roof under normal circumstances because the glucometer simply read 'Hi'which means it was unable to interpret the level since it was uncontrolled,but soemthing held me back.He quietly informed me that he had had a dizzy spell this morning which had brought him to the OPD that day.
I asked him a simple question why? and he matter of factedly told me that his eighteen year old son who had been working in a battery factory in Mumbai had succumbed to a burn injury and had died in Mumbai.I looked at him with my mouth literally open and he quietly addaed sixteen people had lost their lives.My heart sank and I felt truly humbled.
Imagine this happening abroad,the company would have been ruined,whereas this gentleman seems to have quietly accepted the fact,seems to be in peace about it and then nothing else....
Another lady just walked into the OPD with a history of recurrent chest infections,was giggling away at every little thing with her husband at her side.She had subtle features suggestive of systemic sclerosis.So I just put the pulse oximeter on to see her saturation.Her fingers were warm but it would not go above the seventies.She had short systolic murmur in the pulmonary area with a mobile split of the second heart sound.I was just asking her about her reproductive history and she giggled again and informed me that she had lost a one year old child,the only one, three months back.I thought that was a very strange reaction from a mother who had just lost a child but some things cannot be explained and she still had a mammoth task of beating her condition ahead of her but the couple seemed unperturbed.They wanted some medicines and took the paper with the tests written in it and dissappeared.
It happens day in and day out, I see my fellow countrymen tough as can be going through life matter-of-factedly from one meal to another.I watch with my mouth open ,more so ever since I have come to this part of the world.
I asked him a simple question why? and he matter of factedly told me that his eighteen year old son who had been working in a battery factory in Mumbai had succumbed to a burn injury and had died in Mumbai.I looked at him with my mouth literally open and he quietly addaed sixteen people had lost their lives.My heart sank and I felt truly humbled.
Imagine this happening abroad,the company would have been ruined,whereas this gentleman seems to have quietly accepted the fact,seems to be in peace about it and then nothing else....
Another lady just walked into the OPD with a history of recurrent chest infections,was giggling away at every little thing with her husband at her side.She had subtle features suggestive of systemic sclerosis.So I just put the pulse oximeter on to see her saturation.Her fingers were warm but it would not go above the seventies.She had short systolic murmur in the pulmonary area with a mobile split of the second heart sound.I was just asking her about her reproductive history and she giggled again and informed me that she had lost a one year old child,the only one, three months back.I thought that was a very strange reaction from a mother who had just lost a child but some things cannot be explained and she still had a mammoth task of beating her condition ahead of her but the couple seemed unperturbed.They wanted some medicines and took the paper with the tests written in it and dissappeared.
It happens day in and day out, I see my fellow countrymen tough as can be going through life matter-of-factedly from one meal to another.I watch with my mouth open ,more so ever since I have come to this part of the world.
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