Between thoughts and words

Three years ago I read a novella “Yaanai Doctor” (Elephant doctor) in Tamil, by Jeyamohan. It is a heartwarming and deeply moving narrative of the life of Dr. V. Krishnamurthy, a forest department veterinary surgeon who dedicated his life to conservation and treatment of wild elephants in south India. The book moved me deeply through its arresting narrative style and the inspiring tribute that it paid to a humble unsung hero. Dr. V.K ‘s beautiful journey with the elephants in the forest and the way they understand, respect and love him felt inspiring. The book stood for ‘empathetic science’, scientific knowledge laced with compassionate empathy for all life forms. Though I read the book long ago, the feeling that it gave me never left me.   Today, I received the book “Echoes from the Atoll: Inside India’s first TB-free islands” which I had ordered a week ago. Written by Dr. Rakesh P.S., my dear friend, the book is published by Clever Fox Publishing, Chennai. Rakesh sent me a messag...

    Centre for Health and Enquiry into Allied Themes (CEHAT) in collaboration with Agents of Ishq have created a six part video series titled “Good Doctor”. The series addresses an important question in health care delivery – “Who is a good doctor?” Each of the six videos is around 10 minutes in running time. Each episode in this series depicts important aspects of patient care including empathy, understanding social determinants of health, including them in clinical decision making, ethical issues including autonomy, right to health care, and gender sensitive health care. These are important aspects of the practice of medicine which are often overlooked. These videos are in Hindi with English subtitles. They combine humour, depiction of realistic clinical scenarios from the Indian context, and intelligent use of dramatic elements to convey these important messages.    There are two main characters Dr. Hoshiyaar, the young resident doctor in training played by Sawan ...

When Ms. A walked into the clinic something did not feel right. She was a woman in her early thirties. She was a very beautiful woman who was shining in her old ragged synthetic saree that must have originally been yellow but was now with a brownish tinge. Her steps were measured and slow, and there was a stoop in her posture. Her face was bereft of any emotions. Her eyes just showed a blank stare. I welcomed her and asked her to take her seat. I had a young family medicine post graduate student shadowing me in the clinic that day. She sat facing the young doctor and told her, “I have this pain and swelling” and showed her left arm. She pulled up the pallu of her saree and revealed the arm where she had the pain. There was a dark blue bruise with a painful looking swelling. The young doctor touched it and the lady winced in pain. Through this small interaction and the painful moment, there were no expressions on her face.   “Did you fall? Did you hurt yourself?”  “No” “Did you...

Peak summer, or   kathiri veyil  as we refer to it in Tamil, has passed. Some uncharacteristic mild rains have also started drizzling in Chennai. But the ambient temperature and humidity continue to be oppressive. On most clinic days, this becomes an important factor in governing the mood of the day. I have been feeling a lot more irritable the past few months, especially during the start of the clinic. Slowly the body gets used to the sweltering ambient conditions and things become better as the day progresses! This irritability manifests itself as long gaps in the flow of thought, or thought blocks. A middle aged woman came the other day with complaints of intense itching all over the body. There was no rash. She does not have diabetes or hypertension. On a pleasant day my mind would have gone through a whole list of differential diagnoses for itching without rashes - liver disease, kidney disease, anemia, worm infestation, thyroid dysfunction, or sometimes even cancers. But...

  Book Title: “It isn’t just 28 days. Period” Style: Free verse poetry Author: Dr. Prathibha K M Price: Rs. 229.00 Printed by: Periyar Books.com  Can be ordered at:  https://periyarbooks.com/products/it-isnt-just-28-days-period?srsltid=AfmBOop6vovn8Ap5JJDejw1o5vi-RyAxfYH1eX68vIzqXiHx_HXEa0ci   A young girl accompanied by her mother, with a tear-streaked face, forehead fully creased with the wrinkles of pain, holding her lower abdomen and walking with a stooped posture into the clinic is something I see frequently. The staff of the clinic know even without asking that it is the painful cramps of ‘that time of the month’. Immediately they make her lie down in the bed, give her a hot water bag, and some warm water to drink. They would call me to go and check on her. I cannot assume all abdominal pain in a young woman to be menstrual cramps and so I would very politely and softly ask a few questions to rule out something else causing the pain. I am probably the last pers...

I identify as a writer. I write both for work and pleasure. I write scientific papers, research reports, research reviews, peer review reports for work and blogs, short stories and letters for pleasure. In both forms of writing, my process is the same, but there is so much happiness in writing for pleasure (obviously it is writing for pleasure) and so much discomfort and unpleasantness in writing for work. I have been wondering why the experience of writing for pleasure versus writing for work are so different. I decided to write for pleasure about writing for work!    Scientific writing is regulated by scholarly standards. I have been stuck inside this quagmire of ‘scholarly standards’ for more than 2 decades now. What are these scholarly standards in writing? Maintaining objectivity and neutrality is one of the benchmarks of scholarly writing. The scholar is expected to be detached and impersonal. There is no room for emotions and sentiments in scholarly writing. The scienti...

I had a very interesting journey to my clinic yesterday. I was accompanied by a gentleman who had a medical issue which he wanted to discuss with me.     I usually nap during this ride, but yesterday’s conversation was interesting. As part of the discussion about his health issue, I had the opportunity to look at his prescription. It was a long one with 7 medicines listed one below the other in an uncharacteristic clean and readable handwriting.     Of the 7, 3 were pertinent to his medical condition and the other four were nutritional supplements of various kinds. One was a multi vitamin, one contained various fatty acids including omega three, one contained some amino acids and Vitamin B12, and another one had some herbal supplements with whose names I am not familiar. When I see such prescriptions, I do not know what to say. I stay silent.     But the problem arises when the person asks me for my opinion on the tablets. This gentleman asked me that exact...

    I finished reading the book “The Liver Doctor” by Dr. Cyriac Abby Philip. The book title says it is a collection of stories of Love, Loss and Regeneration. The title is an interesting pun, because the liver is the only organ in the body which is capable of regeneration. If a large part of the liver is damaged and only a small part remains, it can actually grow back and regenerate fully. In fact when people’s liver gets damaged, they undergo liver transplantation. Someone else donates a small part of their liver. This donated liver is only a small bit, but then in the recipient’s body it regenerates and forms a full big liver.    To give you a little background, Dr. Cyriac Abby Philip is a hepatologist, a liver doctor. He specializes in diseases of the liver. He works in Kochi, Kerala. He is a very famous doctor as a social media celebrity. He is very active on X (Twitter) in which he posts incisive and sharp posts against Ayurveda and dietary supplements and herb...