We like to think of doctors as angles, saviours, selfless servers of humankind. Doctors in real life are sometimes the exact opposite of these saccharine stereotypes. Sometimes, they can be as vicious as the disease they are treating in the emergency room.
Not too long ago, I was sent to ER because I felt abdominal pain early in the morning. It's not that I hate hospitals. I tried to tolerate the pain as much as I could and didn't want make a fuss. A doctor and a few trainees came and asked me questions. I answered back in a painful, but not angry voice. The trainee then took out a syringe and inserted it right into my flesh. Not the wrist, directly into the nerve below my thumb. She treated me as if I was a dummy she could thrust a needle into, pull and poke around and 'experiment'.
As if the biting pain wasn't enough, the hospital employees, dressed in dirty scrubs, were making so much noise, they wouldn't have heard a patient screaming for help. They conveniently ignored the "please switch off your mobile phone inside the emergency room" signs and were busy playing lok dohari songs on their phones.
In the room next door, there was a man who had severely fractured his legs. I could see bones jutting out of his limbs. Unable to bear the throbbing pain, he would let out a distressing cry every few minutes. Instead of administering painkillers, the doctor lectured the poor man and told him to tolerate the pain.
After three injections, my pain disappeared. I think it's mostly because I concentrated more on the pain the trainee caused me. I was pissed and thankful at the same time. The doctor came by and joked about how I looked like a boy because I had my hood on. I smiled at him and avoided giving him the "you're so lame" look because I did not want to seem rude. He told me how I should look after myself, eat well and a lot of other medical gibberish which were nothing more than white noise to me.
While he was going on about how my pain would get worse if I did not take care of it, he started removing the bandages and was about to pull off the syringe off my hand. You want to trust a doctor and believe that he knows what he is doing. But was I wrong. He was so busy talking that he pulled off the syringe in an up-right position hurting me even more. When I told him how it hurt all he said was, "Well, this should teach you a lesson about taking care of yourself," with a huge grin on his face.
Even today the blue bruise on my hand haunts me. The blood-stained bed sheet on which I was made to lay on, the hands I trusted to take care of me, which ended hurting me more, the man's scream and my uncontrollable urge to get out of the hell, have motivated me to take better care of myself so that I won't have to go within one kilometre of a hospital again.
