Pray for me

I spent the morning today at a clinic amongst the not so healthy. I hate hospitals. It’s a place where they touch you, poke you, prick you, grope you, pinch you,– and none of it in a good way. They put things on your body, in your body, smear you with gooey stuff and scare you with big needles. The amount of blood that I have given today is sufficient to bring the roseate glow back on Kareena Kapoor’s emaciated face. And the amount of needless waiting I had to do – well Aadi story 4,5 and 6 could have been easily completed.

While waiting in the waiting room (ironical naa..what could be a better name for the waiting room?) I was thinking (in the order listed below):

Thought No. 1. I am glad I am not a doctor. Otherwise I would never have gotten to see anyone looking nice ever at work. Even pretty people make for ugly patients. Have you ever seen anyone look breathtaking in jaundice? Or heard someone say "that measles really does wonders for your skin."

Thought No. 2. How shallow is thought no. 1! I should work on my SQ (spirituality quotient - learn some basic acronymns, man.)

Thought No. 3. Isn’t beauty just skin deep? I mean look at me. My liver must be glowing and the natural pulchritude of my small intestine is sufficient to inspire the Ghalib hidden deep in you.

Thought No. 4. The person next to me is coughing non stop. I think I should move. But where to? There is a seat empty next to the poster boy of idiocy. (Why do I call him that? Look at what he is wearing. T shirt with a message. What irritates me more than people wearing t shirt with a message are people wearing t shirts with a message that is long, written in small font, and not even funny) But he looks apparently okay. And he is alone. Now I have the entire works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle donning my library. So I can do a Holmes and you can be my Watson. The guy is alone. So he must be the patient and not a tag-along. He is looking visibly okay. I mean with that face thats the best he can manage. (Shallow Surabhi, Bad Surabhi) So there are no apparent signs of diseases- big or small. But he is here. Laws of physics prove that. In a hospital. So ..do you see where I am going with this dear Watson..he must be suffering from some deadly contagious silent types disease that spreads if you sit next to him. I weigh the two sitting options and decide to stay put.

Thought No. 5. So in 5 minutes, I have realised I am not only shallow but also discriminatory against people with not so funny messages on their t-shirts and no apparent signs of sickness.

Thought No. 6. Crap its 11 am. I am hungry. Damn you idiots get this queue moving.

Break—go for my ECG--It is my first ever! Feels like an accomplishment!

Thoughts continue as now I am waiting for the radiology people to get (off their ass would be inappropriate for the under 18 readership of this blog. Hence I will not write that.) their act together.

Thought No. 7. I am hungry. Why aren’t there good breakfast places in this town?

Thought No. 8. My hand hurts. I think about the time that big, huge, gigantic, gargantuan, enormous (GMAT 750 = good vocabulary) needle pierced my skin. I had missed someone then. It is kinda lonesome when you have to sit thorugh a blood test alone. I mean koi toh hona chahiye who would tell you- “Sab theek hai. Its fine. Just a small prick. You are doing well.” I miss my family then. I have always been scared of needles and during all my needle piercing times mum or dad have been around me. And dad always says while patting my head “brave girl, brave girl”.

Thought No. 9: I miss my Ops teacher. (Thats not oops but Ops (with a capital O) i.e. Operations Management.) He could have fixed the bottlenecks of this place and we could have done a case study on the same.

Thought no. 10: Interrupted when the auntie sitting next to me suddenly turned and asked: So where do you stay? I want to say why, whats it to you. But instead give her my complete mailing address including the major landmark. Near Hotel Katriya. She listens intently and then expects me to return the favor. I decide not to. She moves away and accosts the uncle sitting at the extreme right row 2.

The radiology people get into action. After I yell at (in the order) the girl in the white coat (looks the assistant to assistant types), the technician who came to ask what the matter was, the front office executive who was passing by and made the mistake of stopping and two other patients who wouldn't shut up and were distracting the 'white coat wearing assistant to asst. looks wali' girl from listening to my litany of complaints. So ten minutes of yelling later, with my reputation as a patient patient (irony again) completely ruined I get ushered into the ultrasound chamber.

Now I must confess, through out this stupid health checkup so far I had kept telling myself - How needless this is. I mean waste of money really. These tests are all normal. I am not finding out anything new.

You see I am the person who if she is made to buy a fire extinguisher will comeback and yell at the salesman after 6 months saying the extinguisher was a waste of money as there was no fire at my house. So if I have a fire extinguisher, it must come with occasional fires so that I can feel that it was money well spent. Bangs per buck or some marketing funda this is.

But this theory was severely tested today.

"Oh Oh", said my doctor lady.

I have always hated Oh Ohs. I mean one oh is fine. It can show surprise or acknowledgement; it can precede words like thanks or muck; and it can sometimes even cover the 'wow thats great' emotion. But Oh Ohs are never nice. I dont like Oh ohs. They have so far denoted things like : hate email inadvertently sent to boss, the sinking moment when you realise that you have missed the deadline by a mile and your appraisal is next week, when you criticise your coworker's wife's food and he is standing right next to you; when India drops a catch, when you burn your fingers making roti and when ..Well you get the idea, don't you, dear Watson.

So imagine my consternation (another big word, time to brag about CBSE education) when the lady incharge said it looking at my glowing liver, wonderful intestines and what not.

'Whats wrong'
'Hmm'
'Whats wrong? Really tell me.' (I was about to add- 'I can take it'. But then thought it would be too melodramatic.)
'Well..' (interruption arrives in form of the girl in white lab coat (the asst. to asst. type look wali))

The two talk in Telgu and the lab girl gives me a reaasuring smile.

Friends, that positively freaked me. If you have been ever yelled by Surabhi K esp. when she is hungry, irritated and had a serious blood loss you know you are not in a position to smile for atleast the next 2 hours. Infact, even by the end of the day, all you will manage would be one of those 'small barely-there' smiles, that suggest- Oh another day got over. (See I used oh again. Not oh-oh), and which can be easily dismissed by not so astute an observer as nervous twitching of the lips.

But this girl right after 10 minutes of my giving her a piece of my mind - on how this muck all place should actually be run and how she should treat patients as human beings & not animals kept in the waiting zoo and how she should get the place clean and organised and contact my Ops professor- seems to be overflowing with milk of human kindness and smiling at me with eyes that say "Oh you are so young for this. Have faith. Whatever happens, happens for the best. Btw update your will."

I persist with 'whats wrong' line of questioning. But they decide to wait till I have some family members with me before they break the news. She didnt actually say that. She said, we will tell you in the report. But you know we Holmes types always get to the truth.

So with that freaky episode my day at ERTYU clinic ended. Well atleast the first part. But today has been a roller coaster day. And this was actually the good part. For the bad part, let me have some food, finish my V. and then we will talk.