Latest
07:40 PM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
February 6, 2015
It is so easy to. You get up one morning with a scratchy throat and a raspy cough and someone tells you oh, it is in the air, change of weather, everyone has it. So you sail on regardless, using your non-medical fountain of knowledge on full nozzle and buy an expensive antibiotic because your friend tells you it worked for him and then you have your own normal meds (who’s is getting younger) and then you swallow paracetamol coz your body aches and then a Brufen here and there and now it has moved past Day One and you are hacking away and your exhaustion levels falling so let’s sip some anti-cough mixture and how about a mucous solving syrup while we are at it and some of that nasal spray that opens up the passages and some drops to keep them so.
And now it is end of Day Three and your table looks like a pharmacy shelf but what doctor, for what, just a little cough and cold get over it. Bloody save 500 bucks to be told to take same antibiotic. I am too smart for this stuff. Just calling your doctor buddies on line. Fed up as they are with your using them like precious stones and then putting them back in velvet pouches till next needed they throw you some lifelines and bug off.
Idiot, says my aviation med expert Mani, get to a doctor near your place… he is 2000 miles away.
Come to me says my friend George, the specialist. Nah, 500 bucks man then the meds. Why do you always delay yells my GP, Atul and make mobile calls.
By now your resistance is low, you have had fitful bouts of sleep, you feel cold, nothing is working and you can hardly get to the computer to write and your body hurts like it was being bar-b-qued and then come Thursday afternoon, I get this nice, sleepy sensation, like wanting to just drift off into this pleasant state and at 4.40 pm yesterday I do that. At 5.30 I sort of wake up in a limbo, cold, shivering gently and just about able to drag myself from the bed.
A voice says, this is not okay, this is outside your gym, mister, you better go see a doctor.
So, reluctantly, very reluctantly, I drag myself to the car and go off to see my children’s physician Doc Kaul, still oblivious to what I have done to myself in three days.
I am still all blasé and annoying him with my googled knowhow of meds and how I am taking them and he is not impressed and then he puts the cuff on and takes my pressure and his face falls. Like he begins to touch his machine and screw it again and I say, wassup, too high.
No, he says, it’s hardly there.
Can you believe this. Your genius columnist, man with the gen has successfully mixed his meds and managed to bring his BP down to 70/40 all on his own. I was cheerfully inducing myself into a flaming coma and shocking my body into a somnolence. Just too much medication and advice that no one wanted to give but I demanded.
Anyway, at 70/40 your lungs, already infected, are gasping for breath and you are subduing them even further. Stabilised and this morning singing in the sun, I have never felt so foolish or ashamed or scared or embarrassed.
And I still had Dr Bharat up my sleeve.
I have to monitor for three days and ensure the BP stays normal.
Read this carefully, please. I am smart, not stupid. I give dollops of advice, warranted and unwarranted. And if I could so easily place myself in jeopardy I beg you never self medicate. No one is that smart.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
If my call is so important to them, why don’t they answer it for 22 minutes?
How come when I want to, but something specific online is the only item out of stock.
When I get into a queue or lane going fast, the moment I get in, it becomes the slowest and refuses to budge.
Read more... | Archives