This month was bad!!
All I did was roll on the bed in a fetal position (every morning), drink lots of warm water, land up in the ER, meet a physician, practise a variety of yoga postures (i wanted to throw out the so-called mysterious encroacher), gulp down a good number of Cyclopams, a meeting with my gynaec and finally on the surgeon's table. But gladly, things ended there. The trauma, the pain, the agony, the exhaustion and the fear of the unknown were wrapped neatly in the empty tablet strips and thrown into a garbage dump. It was a stupid little stone that was born in my kidney and now had ventured out to explore other organs.
The questions are:
How difficult is it do diagnose a kidney stone?
How do you know if your reports are providing you the correct information?
Why is it difficult to catch hold of a good radiologist in this city?
And why do big hospitals have mediocre doctors on their roll?
Is mediocrity among doctors on the rise?
Luckily my gynaec asked for a urine culture. She suspected that I was suffering from UTI. But when the culture reports came negative, she immediately suggested that I meet a surgeon. She thought that 20 days of severe abdominal pain cannot be taken lightly. Wish I had gone to her the first time I got the pain. And let me tell you that the pain caused by a stone is much worse than labour pain. For almost an entire month I suffered and so did my family. They stood there helpless, watching me writhe in discomfort.
What impressed me were the different stories I got to hear from the different doctors.
One from the well-known L. H. Hiranandani Hospital said, without relying on any tests, that there was gas trapped in between my intestines and it needs to be released. She prescribed a heavy list of acids and antacids and hell knows what! All she had to do was to ask me to FART. When i revisited her, complaining that the pain was still there she told me to ignore it. The reason she cited this time was irregular meal timings. Interesting. So, was Mr. Gas still hibernating inside? Will I have to spend the rest of my youth and old age with Mr. Gas inside me? Is it capable of impregnating me? Will I have gassy babies? Will I blow up like a balloon? FYI, I met this doc twice in a span of a week.
Then one morning it started again - the pain, and it was miserable. The husband ferried me to the ER of the same hospital and i dislike ERs. There's something very eerie about them. First round of checkup starts. The young doc pressed the right side of my abdomen and sensing the-no-pain look assured me that it is definitely not Appendicitis. He gave me an intravenous injection and asked me to rest. I lay there staring blankly at the ceiling thinking that since Appendicitis is ruled out, could it be a UTI or maybe gastroenteritis or ulcer or an ectopic pregnancy or colon cancer or...I fell asleep. Only to be woken up by panicky noises around me. I was dazed but I could hear them talk. They had wheeled in a 26-year old. His ECG reports showed that the he suffered a stroke. But he didn't know. And now when he did he grew restless and I grew restless. I wanted to escape. I waved out to the doc desperate to catch his attention. I told him to relieve me. He did. Of course, he warned me that if the pain recurs I should get a sonography done. And the pain did occur again.
Now for the sonography I chose a plush-looking diagnostic centre on Nahar Amrit Shakti Road. The reports were beautifully composed. I mean it! Seriously. I fell in love with my internal organs. They felt like the marvellous pillars and engravings of the the Taj Mahal. My report was more like poetry and less like diagnosis. And everything was normal. NO problem.
Now what? Will the doctors refuse to treat me? Will they call the symptoms psychosomatic?
Finally I decided to see my gynaecologist. She's a wonderful woman. She doesn't scare her patients. She will definitely set things right. That's when a urine culture was advised, the reports of which came negative. By now my pain was 22 days old. On the 23rd day all hell broke loose. I could not take it anymore. With the excruciating physical pain, I was now traumatised mentally too. I wanted to give up. I was exhausted. What would start as a 15 minute pain now stayed on for an hour and more. The husband called up my gynaec who told him that it's best to see a surgeon. She recommended one Dr. Sharma who worked out of a small clinic in Mulund. He asked me several questions. Did a physical examination and told me that 99 percent it is a stone. For the remaining one percent let's do a KUB and a sonography tomorrow. I showed him my earlier report. He smirked and gave it back saying that it's a useless one. On his recommendation I went to the radiologist opposite the clinic. And there it was discovered. The seven mm kidney stone that tortured me was there! By then my treatment had started. On the seventh day the precious thing made its way out of my body.
Thus ended my tryst with the stone.
All I did was roll on the bed in a fetal position (every morning), drink lots of warm water, land up in the ER, meet a physician, practise a variety of yoga postures (i wanted to throw out the so-called mysterious encroacher), gulp down a good number of Cyclopams, a meeting with my gynaec and finally on the surgeon's table. But gladly, things ended there. The trauma, the pain, the agony, the exhaustion and the fear of the unknown were wrapped neatly in the empty tablet strips and thrown into a garbage dump. It was a stupid little stone that was born in my kidney and now had ventured out to explore other organs.
The questions are:
How difficult is it do diagnose a kidney stone?
How do you know if your reports are providing you the correct information?
Why is it difficult to catch hold of a good radiologist in this city?
And why do big hospitals have mediocre doctors on their roll?
Is mediocrity among doctors on the rise?
Luckily my gynaec asked for a urine culture. She suspected that I was suffering from UTI. But when the culture reports came negative, she immediately suggested that I meet a surgeon. She thought that 20 days of severe abdominal pain cannot be taken lightly. Wish I had gone to her the first time I got the pain. And let me tell you that the pain caused by a stone is much worse than labour pain. For almost an entire month I suffered and so did my family. They stood there helpless, watching me writhe in discomfort.
What impressed me were the different stories I got to hear from the different doctors.
One from the well-known L. H. Hiranandani Hospital said, without relying on any tests, that there was gas trapped in between my intestines and it needs to be released. She prescribed a heavy list of acids and antacids and hell knows what! All she had to do was to ask me to FART. When i revisited her, complaining that the pain was still there she told me to ignore it. The reason she cited this time was irregular meal timings. Interesting. So, was Mr. Gas still hibernating inside? Will I have to spend the rest of my youth and old age with Mr. Gas inside me? Is it capable of impregnating me? Will I have gassy babies? Will I blow up like a balloon? FYI, I met this doc twice in a span of a week.
Then one morning it started again - the pain, and it was miserable. The husband ferried me to the ER of the same hospital and i dislike ERs. There's something very eerie about them. First round of checkup starts. The young doc pressed the right side of my abdomen and sensing the-no-pain look assured me that it is definitely not Appendicitis. He gave me an intravenous injection and asked me to rest. I lay there staring blankly at the ceiling thinking that since Appendicitis is ruled out, could it be a UTI or maybe gastroenteritis or ulcer or an ectopic pregnancy or colon cancer or...I fell asleep. Only to be woken up by panicky noises around me. I was dazed but I could hear them talk. They had wheeled in a 26-year old. His ECG reports showed that the he suffered a stroke. But he didn't know. And now when he did he grew restless and I grew restless. I wanted to escape. I waved out to the doc desperate to catch his attention. I told him to relieve me. He did. Of course, he warned me that if the pain recurs I should get a sonography done. And the pain did occur again.
Now for the sonography I chose a plush-looking diagnostic centre on Nahar Amrit Shakti Road. The reports were beautifully composed. I mean it! Seriously. I fell in love with my internal organs. They felt like the marvellous pillars and engravings of the the Taj Mahal. My report was more like poetry and less like diagnosis. And everything was normal. NO problem.
Now what? Will the doctors refuse to treat me? Will they call the symptoms psychosomatic?
Finally I decided to see my gynaecologist. She's a wonderful woman. She doesn't scare her patients. She will definitely set things right. That's when a urine culture was advised, the reports of which came negative. By now my pain was 22 days old. On the 23rd day all hell broke loose. I could not take it anymore. With the excruciating physical pain, I was now traumatised mentally too. I wanted to give up. I was exhausted. What would start as a 15 minute pain now stayed on for an hour and more. The husband called up my gynaec who told him that it's best to see a surgeon. She recommended one Dr. Sharma who worked out of a small clinic in Mulund. He asked me several questions. Did a physical examination and told me that 99 percent it is a stone. For the remaining one percent let's do a KUB and a sonography tomorrow. I showed him my earlier report. He smirked and gave it back saying that it's a useless one. On his recommendation I went to the radiologist opposite the clinic. And there it was discovered. The seven mm kidney stone that tortured me was there! By then my treatment had started. On the seventh day the precious thing made its way out of my body.
Thus ended my tryst with the stone.
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Outside the sales office of the Botanical Garden in Ooty.
