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Th Rare Movement Disorders - contd

by Shobha Nandavar
(Bangalore, India)

A perturbed me was still weathering the onslaught of slides after slides of complications of Botox. Out of the blue, I felt dizzy and started sweating profusely. A resident doctor seated next to me was kind enough to enquire if I had diabetes and was slipping into hypo; she then promptly caught hold of my pulse and was flabbergasted not to find my right Radial.

My body was riddled with various anomalies like hyperplastic and hypoplastic vertebrals and many more; but like a dominant wife and a recessive husband giving the ‘expression’ of a happy marriage, my being somehow carried on, aeon after aeon.

My silvery white hairs were shimmering dangerously in the neon light, escalating the fears of the resident, in the meanwhile. She was on the look- out for help, I nudged her for a glass of water, fearing that if I were not swift enough, I could get multiple CPRs from the very many well- meaning greenhorns in my vicinity.

I found some solace by reminiscing wise old quotes from physicians, ‘patients got better despite doctors and their treatment, not because of them’, which was just about to come true in my case, I debated.

Like on and off modes of Parkinson’s, I was off mood. And lo and behold, my friend walks into the tea room. I confide with him all my mock- heroic expeditions. He coolly said that it was going to be ‘a comedy of errors’. On a more serious note he said that Medicine was not black and white and I must have developed my own little new techniques.

I tried calling up my patient, all calls fell on deaf ears of the switched off mobile. I felt like the surgeon who had left her wrist watch in the stomach of Kamal Haasan mistakenly in the Tamil movie Pammal K Sambandam and left no stone unturned to retrieve it.

The cascading slides with complications of Botox were now looking like plain simple Jog falls to me. In accordance with Young’s law of Physics, my tolerance had reached its limits. Misty-eyed, I bade a silent farewell to my friends and decided to head home.

Fifteen minutes into my voyage I got a much sought after call. It was like hunter’s music to the deer’s ears. With pricked ears, I pulled over and answered the call, cowing down the trembles in my voice. To my utter delight it was the patient herself. I started breathing better, the patient was not comatose after all, she was able to speak, was coherent. Neither could the patient contain her excitement at her beloved doctor’s repeated missed calls.

With great trepidation I asked her why she was admitted. She gushed and said that she was admitted for morning sickness. She thanked me and the Botox injection profusely, with which the much awaited pregnancy had blossomed. She added that it was divine coincidence that I had called her up on the very day the pregnancy was detected.

I had no second thoughts about divine grace upon me, more importantly on my patients’ carotids, some of which I must have garnered during one of my temple runs in Malleswaram.

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