Medical Humour

I meant to write about Mondegreens today, but the turn of events this afternoon threw a new topic into my lap. I write this as I sit in this massive room at one of the biggest business centres of Mumbai - Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital.

So, Fatty's lately been complaining of severe pain around the top of his femur (very close to Happyland.) And after about two weeks of nudging, nagging and cussing, he finally walked into this glorious hospital yesterday afternoon, all by himself, as if he's Shaktiman's long lost twin brother.

By the looks of it they were waiting for him with arms wide open. They didn't lose any time in suggesting he get admitted, on the pretext of various tests which included everything from sugar levels to the MRI. The M word scared the collective poop out of the family, so we unanimously agreed for him to check in here. A close family friend volunteered to keep him company through the night, so we stopped hyperventilating. 

It was high time for Fatty to have a complete physical done anyway, and some of us saw this as a brilliant opportunity to get bhajias fried when the oil was still hot.

I got here only this morning because he kept snubbing and discouraging me from coming to stay last night. Some of his slap-worthy reasonings were: only a sofa for you to sleep on, no table for you to work on, you'll get bored, you won't like the food, what you'll come here and do(?), etc.

When I walked into this room, my first thought was that one could hold a decent-sized party in here, followed by my second thought that one could hold a small-sized team meeting here (at gunpoint). Shows you my priorities, doesn't it? 

And the sofa.. it was so comfy I nodded off for an hour! I'm hoping the MRI scan reveals what's wrong with Fatty's sense of perception.

The doctor showed up at 10:00 when Fatty was snoring like a wild boar. I was promptly informed that he'd be back in a bit with all the scans and reports. This bit was actually quite a bit, because he didn't show up until 13:00 when I could wait no longer. Room Service took care of us quite aggressively (when we wanted nothing) until the time when Fatty actually wanted a cup of tea. They were unreachable for half an hour or so then, and Fatty was being adorably patient (pun intended), which is something you never get to see at home. 

I went back home then, because nothing was happening, and it is good to justify one's employment in such cases. When I was miserably failing at this, at around 17:00, Fatty called to describe (because he had forgotten what it was called) the doctor's diagnosis. Yes, the doctor had finally shown up but it didn't look like he had explained everything until Fatty understood. Because what Fatty relayed to me made me drop everything I was doing and rush back to the hospital. All Prayer and Doctor groups on WhatsApp were alerted, though I had absolutely no idea what I was telling them.

In retrospect what Fatty described was hilarious, but the prescribed treatment was far from that. Eventually it turned out Fatty has something called AVN which this doctor wants to treat using Stem Cell Therapy. The idea of one's 33 year old husband having to undergo a new type of trial and error procedure, which has a 60% success rate is quite depressing. Especially since even the doctor seemed happy to fry bhajias when the oil was still hot, by starting his treatment right at that very instant. Perhaps Fatty put his miaow-face on, which must have convinced the doc that no one would think of considering a second opinion.

More and more sense prevailed when we heard what other doctors had to say about this absolutely unnecessary but jaw droppingly expensive treatment plan. When we went to have a word with this doctor it turned out he was gone for the day, and it took some persistence to get him on the phone. 

It also turned out that we cannot get any of the test results tonight and have to wait until 11:00 in the morning to discuss our "options". We will just be grabbing the test results and making a run for it though.

After the hullabaloo had died down and by the time I had said goodbye to the last of the visitors in the lobby, and hung up on the last of the well-wishing doctors, my phone battery had dropped down to nearly 0.01%. So I texted Fatty to say it could die any second while I was making my way up to the room, and he quickly fried some bhajias while the oil was still hot, saying "Good thing we're at the hospital then, let's get him (phone battery) admitted too."

- M for Medical Humour (My A to Z Challenge)