The farm laborer, hailing from the interiors of my district, had come through the recommendation of his local grocery shop keeper- a person I had no remembrance of. He was told that if he found that nothing works elsewhere, at least here he would get a diagnosis. I was mortified by that impression of myself. It is easy to live upto a plain human being's impression but to impersonate a person with powers you don't have is very taxing from the very first moment of interaction.
To cut the story short (so that another story can be appended)
the poor fellow turned out have myelofibrosis- his bone marrow was fast changing into, at first impression, a useless fibrous tissue, but that would later bog him down as it spread to other bones as he would then not be making any new blood in his marrow. As the reality of his condition sunk in him, tears started streaming out and he mentioned the shop keeper again.
"Doc, you treated his daughter's bone cancer, why cant you treat me as well?" was his plaintive request. Then it dawned on me that he was referred to me by my last patient's father.
Speaking with a lump in the throat is an impossibility for me as it is for anyone else. After what must have been an eternity for him and what was certainly the most jaw-clenching, silent, distraught spell of minutes for me, I told him that the lady had a different problem from his, and hence it was more in the nature of the disease than in my treatment acumen that his prognosis lay. He was referred to a relevant specialist and that was the last I saw him.
The lady referred to created a stir in my practice in ways I had never imagined- quite a curious sort of stir. Having consulted a large number of doctors for her shoulder pain, she was ultimately diagnosed to have a malignant tumour. With the help of a team of doctors, she went on to do reasonably well- the cure that the farm laborer was talking about. Thereafter her family ended up believing that I specialized in cancers of the shoulder and hence they went evangelical in their zeal in referring any body who had just about anything that caused shoulder pain, in the hope of saving other lives from cancer of the shoulder- as if there was ever really one such isolated condition.
In that group of patients that came from her reference, I was perceived as a cancer specialist of the shoulder, a tag I never wanted, but one that stuck for some time, because a couple of other patients in that group indeed turned out to have metastatic lesions- cancers spreading from elsewhere- in the shoulder. It took a deliberate and decisive spell of well-intentioned dismissals and referrals elsewhere before I could come unstuck from that perception- or rather, the stir!
To cut the story short (so that another story can be appended)
the poor fellow turned out have myelofibrosis- his bone marrow was fast changing into, at first impression, a useless fibrous tissue, but that would later bog him down as it spread to other bones as he would then not be making any new blood in his marrow. As the reality of his condition sunk in him, tears started streaming out and he mentioned the shop keeper again.
"Doc, you treated his daughter's bone cancer, why cant you treat me as well?" was his plaintive request. Then it dawned on me that he was referred to me by my last patient's father.
Speaking with a lump in the throat is an impossibility for me as it is for anyone else. After what must have been an eternity for him and what was certainly the most jaw-clenching, silent, distraught spell of minutes for me, I told him that the lady had a different problem from his, and hence it was more in the nature of the disease than in my treatment acumen that his prognosis lay. He was referred to a relevant specialist and that was the last I saw him.
The lady referred to created a stir in my practice in ways I had never imagined- quite a curious sort of stir. Having consulted a large number of doctors for her shoulder pain, she was ultimately diagnosed to have a malignant tumour. With the help of a team of doctors, she went on to do reasonably well- the cure that the farm laborer was talking about. Thereafter her family ended up believing that I specialized in cancers of the shoulder and hence they went evangelical in their zeal in referring any body who had just about anything that caused shoulder pain, in the hope of saving other lives from cancer of the shoulder- as if there was ever really one such isolated condition.
In that group of patients that came from her reference, I was perceived as a cancer specialist of the shoulder, a tag I never wanted, but one that stuck for some time, because a couple of other patients in that group indeed turned out to have metastatic lesions- cancers spreading from elsewhere- in the shoulder. It took a deliberate and decisive spell of well-intentioned dismissals and referrals elsewhere before I could come unstuck from that perception- or rather, the stir!
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