Chitra, a 61 year old
bespectacled, sari-clad lady came to consult me for pain in both her knee
joints that she had been having for about three weeks. It had resulted from her
tripping over a watering hose in her compound while she tried reaching over to
her neighbor over their common wall in an attempt to pass on a delicacy she had
just made. This neighbor, a lady of
about the same age, had accompanied Chitra. While I was not particularly looking forward
to this depth of detailed description of her injury, it seemed to flow quite
naturally from her. I noticed that she was actually quite casual in reporting
it to me and had sought my opinion perhaps as a last resort now that the pain
was causing a limp even after three weeks of, what was in her assessment, a
trivial trip over a hose pipe. Usually, patients are reticent in giving their
details, and I could not but help noticing the absence of that trait in Chitra.
The injury seemed to be
bothersome to her in other aspects of her activities of daily living, and the
knees were minimally swollen. As a part of getting more information about her
medical history, I asked her if she had diabetes; declining that she had it,
she volunteered that she did have hypertension, and that it was well controlled
with just a tablet twice a day. Saying
so, she paused and then looked at her neighbor. Now, this lady urged Chitra to
tell me “everything”.
