Jealousy, I had always been confident, was other peoples' domain. It would have remained that way but for a chance meeting between a friend and myself.
A day before my friend met me, I had managed to get done after three years what is prescribed annually: lipid profile. (Actually, 'fat profile' is as accurate a description as the previous one, but for some reason of which I am not aware, jargon is still the favored expression.) I was going through the results and murmuring to myself, "not bad, not bad". At the end of the reported values was a prognostication that said that my risk of a fatal heart attack in ten years was less than 5%, honestly not bad, for most people. My contented mind was giving me solacing messages. Then it struck me that the lab might as well have mentioned that I had a more than 95% chance of surviving without any fatal heart attack- wow!
If any group of impartial persons with a reasonable sense of health parameters look at the two of us, my rotund friend and me, every single one of them will judge me to be the fitter amongst the two of us. You wouldn't need a lab to tell you that my friend has a lot of work to do if he wants his prognostication to be at the same level as mine.
Yet here was this ISO certified lab telling me that this tobacco chewing, alcohol guzzling, sedentary, obese businessman friend of mine was better off with his lipids, aka fats, than me! For a while I lost two things: my confidence in myself and my trust in that ISO lab. I confessed to my friend that for the first time in life I felt jealous of him. He beamed a smile that ruptured my heart for all the wrong reasons.
However, fortunes changed the very next day. He rushed into my office after he had consulted his internist. This good doctor shocked my friend by declaring that his blood pressure was dangerously high and that the lab had not factored that in the prognostication. Now his risk of popping off suddenly shot up to somewhere in the higher twenties!
My trust in myself was partly restored, though the same was not true for the ISO!
I also had a nasty regret: I just could not bring myself to beam a smile at my friend. But then, I consoled myself, it is better to live with this regret than with a friend rendered dead by my smile !
A day before my friend met me, I had managed to get done after three years what is prescribed annually: lipid profile. (Actually, 'fat profile' is as accurate a description as the previous one, but for some reason of which I am not aware, jargon is still the favored expression.) I was going through the results and murmuring to myself, "not bad, not bad". At the end of the reported values was a prognostication that said that my risk of a fatal heart attack in ten years was less than 5%, honestly not bad, for most people. My contented mind was giving me solacing messages. Then it struck me that the lab might as well have mentioned that I had a more than 95% chance of surviving without any fatal heart attack- wow!
If any group of impartial persons with a reasonable sense of health parameters look at the two of us, my rotund friend and me, every single one of them will judge me to be the fitter amongst the two of us. You wouldn't need a lab to tell you that my friend has a lot of work to do if he wants his prognostication to be at the same level as mine.
Yet here was this ISO certified lab telling me that this tobacco chewing, alcohol guzzling, sedentary, obese businessman friend of mine was better off with his lipids, aka fats, than me! For a while I lost two things: my confidence in myself and my trust in that ISO lab. I confessed to my friend that for the first time in life I felt jealous of him. He beamed a smile that ruptured my heart for all the wrong reasons.
However, fortunes changed the very next day. He rushed into my office after he had consulted his internist. This good doctor shocked my friend by declaring that his blood pressure was dangerously high and that the lab had not factored that in the prognostication. Now his risk of popping off suddenly shot up to somewhere in the higher twenties!
My trust in myself was partly restored, though the same was not true for the ISO!
I also had a nasty regret: I just could not bring myself to beam a smile at my friend. But then, I consoled myself, it is better to live with this regret than with a friend rendered dead by my smile !
3 comments:
There is a misconception about ISO in that it signifies "good" quality. Well, the truth is that ISO ensures repeatability of tasks irrespective of quality of outcome. The outcome depends on maturity of process - if process is faulty ISO will produce same error in all results/specimen !
IT gives the report based on what feedback is given. It was possible that the businessman had told them that his BP was normal. After all, a businessman could have been unaware of that fact.
@Hiren Bhatt
Your point is well taken with respect to absolving the lab from just about every responsibility.
The businessman had always gone about with the idea that his BP was normal till the day he met his internist, and so had got it written in the Lab's form within a normal range.
Also, if you read the comment before yours, it makes a valid point about quality certification, something I did not know.
Like lay men we go about trusting quality certificates as having bestowed Gold standards upon the entity certified, which they arent. Excellence is quite different from a certified entity, which as doctors also, both of us, atleast,can testify to, based on our experience and certification!
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