ஓ....அவனா நீயி?

ஓ....அவனா நீயி?

டாக்டர் எனக்கு ரெண்டு மாசமா விடாம தலைவலி

அப்படியா? ரெண்டு மாசமா எப்படி தாங்குறீங்க?

வேற வழி? இப்பதான் இதுக்கு ஒரு விடிவுகாலம் வந்துச்சி போல. அதான் உங்க கிட்ட வந்துட்டேன்.  நீங்க தான் எனக்கு எதாவது பண்ணனும்.

ரொம்ப சந்தோஷம். பண்ணிட்டா போச்சு. ஆமாம்மா இந்த தலைவலி எப்பல்லம் வருது?

வீட்ல இருக்கறப்போலாம்.

வீட்ல யாரெல்லாம் இருக்காங்க? 

நானும் என் வீட்டுக்காறார் மட்டும்தான்.

அப்படியா? அப்ப இதுக்கு என்ன காரணம்னு எதாவது தெரியுதா?

எல்லாத்துக்கும் காரணம் என் புருஷன் தான்.

ஏம்மா அவர் என்ன பண்றாரு?

அவர் ஒன்ணுமே பண்ண மாட்டேன்கறாரு. அதான் காரணமே.

ஒஹோ. கத அப்படியா? அதுக்கு வேற டாக்டர் இருக்காறுமா. நான் இல்ல. 

எதெல்லாம் பாக்க வேண்டியது இருக்குடா. ச்செய்.

(இது ஒரு உண்மை சம்பவம் அல்ல)

Much Ado about a little Shoe-Polishing….?

Much Ado about a little Shoe-Polishing….?

I had gone with a colleague today to Ritchie Street, a small lane off Mount Road, famous for its shops selling a variety of electronic parts at cut rates. My friend had wanted to purchase a Wifi-router and modem for his home and as he caught me idling alone in the rest room he dragged me along with him to go shopping. As we made our way back to the hospital after the purchase, we were about to take the pedestrian subway which delves beneath Mount Road to come up to the other side of the road (where his car was parked) when he suddenly stopped and asked me “Do you mind?” before he thrust his shoe at a shoe shine man sitting there beside the subway and gestured at the man to start polishing his dusty shoes. Right beside the man was a boy seated with the same set of shoe shine paraphernalia and my friend made an imperious gesture at the boy (who had a close resemblance to the man- a son in the family trade perhaps?) to start work on my shoes. I don’t know exactly what me do it but I stepped back with a muttered apology and waved off the boy. I mean, everyone knows that I am not a socialist that I have nothing against the working man making an honest living off the sweat off his labor and all that-but I didn’t feel comfortable with standing there like a lord and having a boy bend over my shoes and polish them. I know shoe-polishing is and old and respected profession but the mere thought of someone else polishing my shoes made me very, very uncomfortable. “No one touches my shoes except me” I told only half-jokingly to my colleague. And that’s the whole truth.

I have always been an exceptionally good polisher of my shoes right from my earliest remembrances of my school days. I have this little ritual I call Sunday polishing- when I lay out all my formal shoes on Sunday nights and sit down to polish them up.  Now everyone knows that there are different kinds of shoe polishes available- the little wax tins, the liquid polishes and the instant shiners. I have and use all of them in their proper sequences- selecting and using them for effective results. The one I trust most to give me a mirror finish is the basic wax polish (off a tin) and that’s my starter. After cleaning the dust off with a duster I use a soft cloth -an old discarded under-vest/banian cloth serves well here to apply the wax coating evenly over all of the shoes surfaces. And then I start off with the large, coarse brush (I own half a dozen shoe brushes – from the coarsest to the finest grade in order) to polish up the wax coating.  Gradually I move on to the finer polishing with the softest bristled, smaller brushes and as the gleam of the polish starts building up I go slower and slower and more careful to push with the grain and not against it. And in a few minutes I have a mirror finish polish which will last me a week if taken care properly. And every day morning before I leave for work, I just need to remove the previous days dust coating, apply a little liquid polish where needed and buff it up with an instant shiner and voila the mirror finish is back restored. 

And maybe that’s why I don’t get my shoes polished by outsiders. I just don’t trust them to do it right. Imagine having a half dozen wax polish tins at home- black, brown, tan, white, neutral etc – and all of them selected brands only and a half dozen brushes carefully selected to help get a mirror finish and a willingness to spend an hour every Sunday night polishing up the shoes – black lace-ups, black loafers, brown lace-ups, brown pull-ons etc in declining order of use and after all this to get it polished somewhere else? Or maybe I just love the honest labor it takes to polish a shoe, the hard work and the burn in the arm as the brush goes faster and faster on the leather and the shoes starts shining more and more and taking on the glossy mirror look I love to see.  Or I just love the smell of the wax and the leather and the knowledge that a thing of beauty is taking shape in my hands. Or maybe it’s all of this and more. Who knows? 

So tell me do you polish your shoes at home yourself? Do you even like polishing shoes? Or do you think that I am far too obsessive over something like shoes? Do tell.

An Unfortunate Death and Avoidable Dangers

An Unfortunate Death and Avoidable Dangers

So there was this news recently about a young boy who died after he was mistakenly given diabetes and hypertension (sugar and BP) drugs by the pharmacist at a hospital. The case was taken to the court and the judge sentenced the hospital, the doctor and the pharmacist to pay a fine to the dead boy’s family.

Now I am not condoning what happened for one minute but i fail to see the logic of punishing the doctor. As a doctor i know that although we are ultimately responsible for the patient’s well being, we do have to trust others to be competent at their jobs too. We cannot be there at every single step of the way- supervising everyone else and at the same time seeing all our patients too. In my (maybe biased) view it was the pharmacist who bears the full responsible for he was careless in giving those drugs to the boy without checking what he was giving and to whom. That doctor had no way of knowing what had happened- he must have seen the patient, written the prescription and sent the boy on to the pharmacy. What happened later cannot be held to his account unless his hand writing was so bad that the pharmacist had mistaken the prescription and given the wrong drugs - which happens more often than you think.

Even on the off-chance that the pharmacist had a doubt on the prescription- the pharmacist should have called up the doctor immediately to ask about his doubt- he shouldn't have blindly given away the drugs. I mean, if the prescription is for a twelve year old how can you with any commonsense give him BP and sugar tablets? What I believe happened was the pharmacist must have been dealing two separate prescriptions at the same time and must have simply switched the two covers to different patients. The other person who got the children drugs must have simply not been cured while the child who got the adults drugs had died of overdose.

As sad as this episode is it reminds us that even the things we take for certain have the means to go wrong if someone down the line is careless for a minute. And that’s why I welcome the initiative to use computer/online prescriptions. The pharmacist can no longer explain any errors in giving drugs by blaming it on the doctor’s handwriting. and as for doctors part-I often use a simple fail proof method- instead of trusting blindly to the pharmacist for giving the right drugs- I ask the patient to come back to my cabin with the medicines so I can explain to them what to take and when to take. Of course I don’t do this routinely to all my patients (see them a second time that same day) - sometimes I just don’t have the time if an extra-large bunch of patients are crowding me- but most days I do use this final check. But I always, always use this for pediatric (child) cases - because I know that with children even the smallest error in dosage can have fatal consequences- so we need to take extra care when giving any medicine to kids.

The point of this post is – we know that medicines are life saving but they are also risky and dangerous if they are not the right medicines and are not taken in the right doses and in the right times. Always keep that simple fact in mind and check once, twice, thrice before taking medicines casually. And finally I just wish that other doctor had also called back that patient and checked his medicines. Or his mother had gone back to ask about them. If so the boy would still be alive today. Let’s hope this error never takes place again.