After 'Mixopathy' & 'Khichdification', ‘Googlopathy’ gets official recognition.

Mumbai: In another major jolt to the already crippling healthcare system in the country, the government has passed a bill to recognise ‘Googlopathy’ - the most modern branch of medicine where patient prescribes medicines to his doctor, as a non-conventional system of healthcare and healing.

After ‘Mixopathy’ and ‘Khichdification’ in medical education, the decision to recognise ‘Googlopathy’ has further raised eyebrows and dissent among the doctors & medical pundits.

In an exclusive interview with the Quackdoses, Mr. Fees Naidunga, the brainchild behind the movement said, “Most of the time, patients have already diagnosed themselves on Google, but go to a doctor only for a second opinion or because of the lack of license to prescribe medicines to themselves. It is a well-known fact that doctors also update their knowledge by reading articles off Google. Doctors should not presume that they have a proprietorship on medical knowledge, but should be open-minded within reason to any scientific fact introduced by their patients without condescendingly dismissing it. Hence we welcome this decision by the government.”

Condemning the bill, Allopathy Doctor’s Association has now released an official statement that patients who self-diagnose from Google search will only be prescribed medicines after searching on Google.

Elon Musk announces humanoid ‘Tesla Bot’, medical interns cheerful.

Mumbai: A wave of happiness has swept among the medical interns of the country after Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that his electric automobile company is taking the next step in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and is all set to launch a humanoid robot prototype. Images of the upcoming robot have taken social media by storm and were widely shared on Whatsapp groups and Facebook pages by the medical fraternity.

In an exclusive interview with the Quackdoses, the billionaire entrepreneur said, “Tesla Bot has been designed for dangerous, repetitive or boring work that people don’t like to do. My inspiration behind this idea were the ‘mama’ medical interns in India who have often complained about their boring work like filling up pathology or radiology requisitions in the OPD, holding the limbs of patients in the Orthopedic OTs during surgeries and other day to day mundane jobs.”

Healthcare experts and medical pundits have claimed that the Terminator like robot would have “profound implications for the healthcare sector”and address the labour shortage in medical colleges.

Unconfirmed sources have meanwhile claimed that the Surgeon’s Association of India have written to Musk to design the Bot’s fingers for doing ‘nausea inducing’ procedures like manual evacuation of faeces and Ryle’s tube insertion among others.

It all starts with you...

A 65 year old female was brought to my Emergency Department yesterday with a history of sudden collapse and breathlessness just outside Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai.

She had been recently diagnosed with a tumor of the thyroid gland with metastasis to the lungs. Unfortunately, the tumor was also pressing onto her trachea (wind pipe). She had gone to Tata Memorial to get few blood tests done as advised by the oncologists. Since the doctors there informed that due to heavy patient load, they might have to wait for a while before emergency treatment could be initiated, attendants decided to get her to our Emergency.

After all life saving measures and stabilizing the patient, I called for the attendant to take a detailed clinical history. Unlike the patient who looked extremely poor and frail, the attendant was a very well dressed, educated middle aged male.

Hi, Good Morning, I’m Dr. Mohit. How are you related to her?”, I asked.

“She has been working in our office as a cleaner for the past many years and has no family here in Mumbai. She only has a distant cousin, but he stays far off in some place in interior Maharashtra”, he replied.

“Her initial blood work is not good. There is acid build up in her body, she’s on high flow oxygen and will need ICU admission for further workup and management”, I informed.

“Doctor, please go ahead with whatever is best for her”, was the reply.

“Do you wish to find out any hospital charges before we proceed ?”, I curiously inquired.

“What has to be done, has to be done, at whatever cost. I cannot abandon my employees in such testing times, especially when we are dealing with such a life saving decision”, was the reply I got, and he proceeded to get the admission formalities completed.

I reason I write about this is not only to appreciate people like the employer in this case, but for all readers to contemplate. How many of us would do something like that, for any of our lowest level employees including peons, drivers, cleaner, and others? Lending money is one thing, but to be physically present when someone is in need, is something I have not seen often, and especially not during this COVID time when everyone is facing financial crisis.

I feel that the world would be a better place if we all yearn for a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Every single thing we do with the intention of ‘doing good’, no matter how small, does make a difference.

This incident has also reinforced my belief in Sir Richard Branson’s famous quote, “Clients do not come first. Employees do. If you take care of the employees, they will take care of the clients.”

The Road Ahead...

 

The peak of the deadly 2nd wave of COVID in April-May’ 21 was the worst humanitarian and public health crisis of independent India. 

In a sharp contrast to the official government reports and numbers, the undeniable truth is that the ground reality was vastly different. The true death figures in my opinion are far beyond our own worst fears.

With less than 2 % of the annual GDP spent on healthcare in India, and poor population to hospital bed ratio (approximately 5 beds for 10,000 Indians), it was only a matter of time that the system collapsed and was left exposed in front of the COVID tsunami that hit us.

With Emergency Departments being the entry point to hospitals for COVID patients and the 1st hand witnesses to the helplessness in offering admissions to many patients (due to back of beds, oxygen, essential drugs and manpower), another mentally traumatic experience for healthcare workers was the constant arrival of dead bodies to the Emergency Departments.

Even after 4 months, I often think about those scenes when I would have to frequently walk out of my department to attend to unresponsive patients, and unfortunately declare almost all of them dead in their private cars, autos and ambulances itself. 

The scenes that followed – the crying & howling, the disbelief, the emotional trauma since many of them were in their 30s and 40s, old parents bringing their son dead, people holding our feet begging for us to do something, the numbness on faces of young wives and children, the rich & the poor alike – I don’t even have words to describe those emotions. I'll never forget.

I distinctly remember that for 3 days in a row in the last week of April, a minimum of 1 dead body kept coming in every hour during the 8 hour shift. I was so heartbroken and helpless that I did not have any more courage to look at the relatives in the eye and break the bad news to them, so I started sending my junior doctors to attend to such patients.

With the fear of the 3rd wave looming large, and me being a victim of COVID myself who was admitted in the ICU in May, I seriously hope from the bottom of my heart that the situation does not become as grim as it was in 3 months ago.

We Indians have already suffered a lot – emotionally having lost near & dear ones, economically – due to loss of jobs / businesses facing existential threat and the depleted savings, psychologically due to the prolonged lockdown (& spouses working from home + children not going to schools, on a lighter note), academically due to the online schooling, health wise due to the long term effects of COVID on patients, and many other far-fetched consequences and impact on people’s lives.

I often pray and can only hope that the ‘new normal’ in coming days is a better one, and "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." -Andy, The Shawshank Redemption