Common sense dictates we should all be grateful for the benefits of modern medicine. We worship doctors, adore vaccines, and judge a country’s development status by its per capita numbers of doctors, hospitals and injections.
All this I recognise in the abstract. But at the visceral level — pun intended — I fear hospitals, dislike doctors, and abhor whatever it is surgeons do behind closed doors. In addition to being borderline nosocomephobic, I’m mildly iatrophobic, reasonably tomophobic, and acutely trypanophobic. Last week, all these phobias got together for a rave party in my head when I learned Kattabomman must undergo emergency surgery.
When he complained of tummy ache, we first thought it was an excuse to avoid his meals and binge on mangoes and ice cream. But the pain got worse, and an ultrasound revealed acute appendicitis.
Scarred for life
“We must operate ASAP to remove his appendix,” said his paediatrician.
I was stunned. “You want to cut open a five-year-old and take out an organ?”
“It’s a useless organ,” she said. “And it’s threatening his entire system.”
“There must be other ways,” Wife said. “Can’t this be resolved through medicines?
“Nope.”
“The surgeon earnestly advised me to be ‘transparent’ and ‘honest’ — poor chap didn’t know he was talking to an Indian journalist”
“I have an idea,” I said. “Instead of operating on the boy, how about digging under a Mughal monument somewhere? That should make the appendicitis go away.”
“Excellent idea,” the doctor said. “But we don’t have time to approach the courts.”
“Will the operation leave permanent scars on his belly?” Wife wanted to know.
“Will you be using needles?” I asked.
“Can I have ice cream? Katta asked.
Vibes matter
The paediatrician had stopped listening. She was busy scribbling. She handed us a piece of paper with the name of a surgeon and a children’s hospital and ordered us to admit Katta immediately. I wanted a second, third, maybe fourth opinion before subjecting Katta to a surgical strike.
I took pictures of the pictures of Katta’s appendix that the ultrasound had produced and shared it with every doctor I knew, including a young gerontologist I was grooming for my old age. They all said the same thing: admit him at once.
And we did. It was my first visit to this particular children’s hospital, and it had a different vibe — not like hospitals for grown-ups. The walls, painted in primary colours, depicted characters from fairytales, and the staff tended to treat everyone, including adults, like children.
My natural instinct was to protect Katta from the knowledge of what was in store for him. But the surgeon earnestly advised me to be ‘transparent’ and ‘honest’ — poor chap didn’t know he was talking to an Indian journalist. But truth will out, as they say, and it hit Katta when a nurse approached him with a tray of sharp objects. It was heartbreaking — and ear-splitting — to see an IV cannula inserted into his tiny wrist.
The next morning, as they wheeled him to the operation theatre, we were informed that the procedure would take about an hour. I spent the waiting time meditating on the cosmic necessity of an appendix. If every single one of God’s creations has a purpose, what, I wondered, is the purpose of an appendix which, according to science, is useless? If the appendix is a metaphor, who, or what, is India’s appendix — totally useless but potentially fatal to the system? And so on in that vein.
Manipulative best
The procedure went well. How did I know? The surgeon WhatsApped me — directly from the OT — a picture of Katta’s excised appendix. It looked like a baby’s little finger — wet, pink, and really angry-looking. Katta arrived in his room an hour later, looking like a sedated, injured kitten. “He will be under observation for 48 hours,” the nurse said. I thought that was ambitious, and I was right.
Their patience ran out in 24 hours. As the pain wore off, Katta got back to his usual self. He began manipulating the controls of his motorised bed with the ease of a crane operator at a Noida construction site, toppling pillows, overturning food trays, and on one occasion, levitating a nurse who was taking his blood pressure. He couldn’t resist squeezing the buzzer by his pillow. Every time he pressed, a nurse would magically appear at his bed. An entertaining game, no doubt. Finally a nurse lost it, and said sternly, “Hey, you can’t play with it.”
“This is a children’s hospital,” I said. “And you’re telling a child not to play?”
The nurse glared at me. “Just joking,” I said, but she wasn’t amused.
By the 38th post-operative hour, Katta had yanked out the cord of a Venetian blind, given a sanitiser bath to all his stuffed animals, and picked a fight with another child in the playpen. The hospital decided, wisely, in my opinion, to discharge him early. We were relieved. I almost wanted to thank the appendix for going away. Then I remembered: it hadn’t gone away on its own.
The author of this satire is Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu. sampath.g@thehindu.co.in
