Sunday 23 August 2015

My wanderings - 16

Sometimes unusual experiences overshadow the conviction of an individual  and shatter his faith on established institutions and noble professions. It was month of June in early eightees when my mother fell seriously ill with high fever and my father, who was himself a Medical practitioner, after trying very hard to recover her, advised me take an opinion of some specialist.
I fixed an appointment with a renowned medical specialist of city. After waiting in long quees I was able to get a meeting with  him. He properly checked the pulse of my ailing  mother and I advised him that she was suffering from high fever from few days and apprised him with all the symptoms she was facing, which I will not disclose this time to reader, as the purpose which prompted me to write these lines will be defeated.
Doctor after making more investigations wrote in bold letters on prescription slip ...Pyroxia, which my father told me later  means unknown fever in medical terminology. He also advised for some pathological tests and prescribed Paracetemol for the time being. After few days he advised me for chest X Ray ,some more tests and prescribed some new medicine. This practice continued for days together. There were no signs of recovery and condition of mother got deteriated   day by day.  When ever I visited Doctor he would advise me for more tests or change  of medicine. As a layman I could guess that Doctor was either narrowing his field of investigation by advising for different tests or practising hit and trial method. I got very much desperate and once in a whim of desperation I laid my hand on some books lying on shelf. There was some very old book of father entitled  Medicine. While turning the pages of book haphazardly I found details of some common diseases and I got stuck up on the page entitled Typhoid  ,when I found  striking resemblance of the symptoms of the disease with that of my mother.
There was full detail of symptoms of the disease Typhoid , some of which I still remember. There will be high fever and constipation in one week and diarrhea in another. The disease relapses in weekly periods, either it will be for one week or for many more weeks. The colour of tongue will be white in the middle and sharp red on the edges and much more.The medicine prescribed for it was Chlorophenicol.
I immediately rushed to my father and apprised him with the details in the book. After reading the details my father got convinced and visited his friend who was also a doctor and after some deliberations they formed the opinion and prescribed the medicine named Chlorostrip, which was combination of two salts Chlorophenicol and Straptomycin.
After taking the medicine mother began to show the signs of recovery and after few days she was all right.
After that I never visited that Specialist and he is still a renowned  practising Doctor.

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