October 16, 2006
Injured? You must go to Sion
This was published in today's Mumbai Mirror.
A certain percentage of reader feed-back has always focused on the frivolousness of my writing. “I am sick of your rasam-idli. Do you know the plight of those who have been scammed by the South Indian Co-op Bank? Can’t you write about them?” And so on and so forth. Apart from the fact that what I write about is really nobody’s business, it is amazing how presumptuous people can get.
Having said that, when my dear friend Nobs Roy mailed me some stuff about Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in Mumbai (or rather the lack of), I thought I could use this opportunity to get serious.
Question: If you were to get seriously injured in a road-traffic accident, where would your best chances of survival lie?
a. Public hospital (Sion, KEM, etc)
b. Private hospital (Hinduja, Lilavati, etc)
The answer is (a). The public hospitals have round the clock services including emergency diagnostic and blood facilities, easy handling of police and legal inquiries and no risk of being denied treatment due to non-payment of bills. Virtually all specialties required to handle emergency care (orthopedic surgeons, general surgeons, neurosurgeons, anesthetists, radiologists) are available at all times. And among the public hospitals, Sion has perhaps the best EMS, simply because of the vision of the previous deans and surgeons who worked hard to make the EMS a well-oiled machine.
The problem in Mumbai, unfortunately, is of reaching the EMS services. A common medical fraternity joke is that the only difference between an ambulance and a hearse, is its color. In a city choked with vehicles and the complete absence of civic sense, it is virtually impossible for ambulances to reach any hospital in time. And even if ambulances are given way or are allowed to break signals, it is not uncommon to find a couple of cars behind the ambulance availing of this advantage as well! And so, the study conducted by Arvind Vatkar, Poonam Vaishnav, Pragnya Supe, Ritam Chowdhury and Sandeep Patil, found that only a third of emergency cases were brought in by ambulances. The rest came in police vans, taxis, private vehicles and some even on stretchers by foot.
It is a pity that a country that is supposed to be the next superpower and a city that is the financial capital of that country does not even have a basic EMS for the public. There is no single number to call and no coordinating authority to work with. If a person reaches the hospital in time, it is usually due to the timely arrival of a complete stranger, either the police or a passerby. And contrary to popular belief, the police were actually able to rescue people in about a quarter of accidents and then transported the victims in police vans to the hospital.
With the virtual absence of any kind of civic training in first-aid as well as trained paramedics (even if an ambulance manages to come to you, it is actually just a transportation mode with no trained personnel to handle accidents), about half of the victims receive no first aid on the way and the other receive inappropriate care, which is even worse.
Despite all this, the EMS at Sion Hospital does a great job. And though, as with most things in our daily lives, the authorities are completely useless in terms of providing pre-hospital care during accidents, it is a public Municipal hospital that provides perhaps the best accident care, if you manage to get to it…alive.
Posted by bhavinj at 10:19 AM | Comments (2)
May 19, 2006
Just Once is Enough
This essay appeared in today's Mumbai Mirror.
We had the 20th class reunion of our medical college batch that joined LTMMC in 1982, about four years ago. Except for those few who didn’t want to be found, everyone who was still in India was there. Along with their spouses. It was great to see and meet everyone after such a long time. As the afternoon wore on, the one thing that hit home was that everyone without exception was doing well in life. Everyone! Including those who had come in through the reservation seats, which were around 35% in those days.
It was then that the power of affirmative action struck hit many of us and we talked about it at length during the reunion post-mortem a few weeks later. We could remember some of our colleagues who had come in with nothing else, but the dream, fire and ambition to be a doctor and who, despite initial failures and problems, had become doctors like of all us. Their lives, the lives of their parents and families and those around them, had completely changed along the way. To put it in a country-western kind of way – they now had the money and the gals. Without reservations, it is unlikely that any of this would have happened.
Some of them went on to do post-graduation as well, by fighting for the post-graduate (PG) seats like everyone else. Eighteen years ago, when we were taking up our PGs, there were no reservations. A post-graduate degree in medicine was considered a “high seat of learning” and it was unthinkable that you could have reservations at this level. And everyone fought it out at this level, irrespective of caste, creed or method of original entry into the MBBS course.
Reservations work and make a difference. There is no denying this fact. But the reason for reservations is to provide an opportunity to those who do not have a level playing field during schooling or in junior college. Those who are economically or socially disadvantaged are thus helped by this one act of affirmative action, when they join medicine. Becoming a doctor is a big deal…you enjoy an elevated status in society, you join the top 5% earners in the country and life changes for the better. Always. Even if you don’t want it to. Just one doctor in the family is all that is required to pull the family out of its cycle of poverty and related problems, thus serving the original purpose of the reservation policy.
Unfortunately, in practice, the policy does not work as envisaged. Too many people from the “creamy layer” take advantage of this policy and abuse the system. In theory, those families that have already used the reservation policy to better themselves, should no longer be allowed to avail of reservation seats, simply because of the accident of their birth-caste.
Just as it is intuitively obvious that the “creamy layer” should be disallowed from abusing the system, in the same manner, once a person is a doctor, using reservations as a method of gaining one more advantage, i.e. a PG seat, should also be considered abuse of the system. It is not people from the general public who take up a PG seat, but only those who have already become doctors. And by the time medical students have become doctors after their 5 ½ years grind, the playing fields have leveled, irrespective of the original portal of entry into the system.
By allowing those who have become doctors on the basis of a reservation seat, to get a PG seat as well through reservation, is a case of double affirmative action. Just as double jeopardy is unacceptable (trying a person for the same crime twice), double affirmative action (allowing the same person to get a reservation seat twice) does not make sense. It is unfair to those who are fighting for these seats on merit and also insulting to those who despite having entered MBBS through reservation, have now proved themselves equal to everyone else through sheer hard work and perseverance.
We didn’t have PG reservations, eighteen years ago and the system worked well. Somewhere down the line, the “higher centre of learning” and “double affirmative action” reasoning was subverted, someone went to court and 27-30% reservations were introduced. Now they want to make it 50%, which is absolutely ridiculous. Its time we went back to 0%, i.e. no PG reservations whatsoever.
Posted by bhavinj at 11:38 AM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2006
Damned if you, damned if you don't
This appeared in today's Mumbai Mirror
The resident doctors all over Maharashtra have again gone on strike this week and its that déjà vu feeling all over again.
Every three-four years, since the early-80s, there has been a strike by resident doctors. The issues are always the same: more money, better working conditions and better accommodation. This time the flash-point though, is the issue of security, due to the increasing incidence of doctor-bashing violence by patients within the hospitals.
Should the resident doctors strike?
Think about living, four to a 150sq feet room, with bed-bugs, poor ventilation, terrible food, unclean water, a 24-hours a day, seven-day a week schedule and the constant threat of work-related diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis B, and now, the threat of violence. For around Rs. 8000/month (<150$). Now think how you would feel if the resident doctor were you, or your son or your daughter.
So why is there such a big issue created when they go on strike?
Because, when the residents strike, more than 50% of the city's population is suddenly deprived of basic and essential medical services. That’s right. 50%. 7 million people. So do read on.
Let’s now understand who these resident doctors are!
Resident doctors are the ones who are training for their specialty MD and MS degrees, after having finished their basic MBBS and internship, in colleges, usually attached to large public hospitals, usually run by the government, e.g. JJ Hospital or by the Municipality, e.g. KEM, Nair and Sion. These hospitals provide health-care virtually free of cost to anyone and everyone, even to those who are not domiciled in Mumbai.
The residents, in theory, are supposed to be “trainees”, “training” in these hospitals to obtain the theoretical and practical knowledge that they need to eventually become qualified, specialized doctors such as surgeons, cardiologists, radiologists, etc. - in reality, the authorities get cheap labor to run these public hospitals. In KEM Hospital alone, there are 700 resident doctors and 400 staff doctors, which means that if the resident doctors aren’t around, at least 60% of the work should still go on. In reality, only 5-10% of the actual work happens, because despite their “student/training” status, they are completely critical to the functioning of these hospitals. Even the “peripheral” hospitals such as Kasturba (opposite the Arthur Road jail), Rajawadi (in Ghatkopar), Bhagwati (in Borivli), etc, stop functioning, because they too completely depend on residents posted in rotation from the central hospitals.
Are the residents then morally justified in striking?
Do you really think that we have never agonized about this? This is a demon that has always haunted us, all through each strike that we’ve ever participated in. I don’t have an answer despite extensive soul-searching, but most of us eventually rationalize this action by transferring accountability onto the authorities, holding them responsible for the strike having happened in the first place.
These strikes are preventable, simply because the demands can easily be met. If the authorities were proactive and tried to solve the residents' problems in time, things would not come to this. Expecting this to happen however, is obviously a pipe dream. Maybe, the residents could go to court, and file a public interest litigation. But from where will the resident doctors get the time, energy and money, required to fight a court case on a daily basis? And so, the only solution that remains, is to go on strike, for which there is at least some concerted and determined effort, manpower and time, if not money, available, for a short period of time.
You would think then that the authorities would want to negotiate with the doctors to resolve the strike. Think again!
Who are the people affected by the strike? It is those people who cannot afford private doctors and hospitals, those who earn less than sustenance level and those who live in slums or on the roads or wherever.
The authorities do not care, since these poor people affected by the strike don't really matter. It is not like the Municipal Mazdoor Union going on strike and winning their demands in 24-48 hours, because no one can stand their garbage not being collected.
Moreover, the resident doctors are eventually doctors, who after a few years are going to be in the top 10% income bracket in the country – subconsciously, this affects the extent of public and press support – the authorities play with this fact and so they wait and threaten, wearing down the patience and enthusiasm of the resident doctors, who after all are educated, intelligent, white-collar individuals, completely unused to this sort of a method of protest.
At the end of a month or 40 days (the usual length of a residents' strike), the strike ends, the weary residents accepting whatever few sops the authorities are willing to give. And the authorities magnanimously tell the striking doctors that they will not penalize them for not having worked for one month and will allow them to keep terms - one of the worst fears resident doctors have, is of losing a six-month term or losing registration. Threaten them with this loss and half of them start thinking of capitulating.
Why don't the residents learn from the past? Because, every three years, a new crop of residents is in place. And the lessons of the past are forgotten.
The anatomy of the strike, thus remains the same.
First week - enthusiasm, rallies, hunger strikes, street plays
Second week - some of the less enthusiastic residents go home, some default, some start studying for their exams on the sly
Third week - government threatens loss of term and enthusiasm dips.
Fourth week - most residents want to get back to work.
Fifth week - strike is over
But things don’t end here. Like a tragi-comedy, even after an agreement is finally struck, the authorities do not always fulfill the terms of the agreement. Follow-up by MARD (Maharashtra Association of Medical Doctors), after a strike, is extremely poor due to the fact that the doctors get extremely busy, working, learning and reading for their exams and they are extremely mobile, changing hospitals and rotations all the time. The authorities know this as well and can play around with the terms and conditions any way they want…until the ground is laid for the next strike about three years later. And everything comes full cycle.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Posted by bhavinj at 01:50 AM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2005
Patient Empowerment - Definitely not a Good Thing
The Sunday NY Times has a long article on the travails faced by patients in the US, in this modern world.
The article is a must-read for all patients and doctors. It traces the history of the current state of affairs, relating it to the movement for access to information that the baby-boomers demanded in all aspects of their lives, including medicine. As the unquestioning role of the doctor diminished and the patients started feeling empowered in making their own decisions, as the amount of ligitation increased along with the subsequent rise of defensive medicine, it led to a situation where the doctors stopped taking decisions for the patients, started putting choices in front of the patients and asked them to make the call.
That’s like asking a blind man to decide on the path to take at a crossroad, by asking him to read the signboards.
A few years ago, an article in the BMJ (I couldn’t find the link) expounded on this subject as well, saying that eventually the role of a doctor would be that of a travel agent. As patients became more empowered, they would themselves figure out their problems and their choices of treatment and the doctor would only help as a facilitator.
This is all so much bull-shit.
The majority of people do not know where their liver is, most can’t even pronounce the word “diagnosis” correctly and the majority of information comes from websites that are not peer-reviewed. The only real acceptable sources of information are through peer-reviewed journals, accessed through a portal like Pubmed, where in any case, without subscriptions, access to a lot of information is restricted. Moreover, even peer-reviewed information can be patchy, seemingly contradictory and often focusing on one tiny aspect of a part of the problem, which may not be apparent to the “lay” individual.
The situation is unfortunate. Though people love the concept of feeling empowered, when it comes to deciding between different lines of treatment, they just don’t have the training, the objectivity and the understanding to make a choice. Eventually the choices are often made on emotional reasons, or on the basis of past personal experience, or the advice of gurus and other well-meaning friends and family, all of which are flawed parameters to use. In India, the problem is further compounded by the plethora of alternative modalities available as well, virtually none of which, barring properly practiced ayurveda, have been proved scientifically to work.
One of the reasons the article gives for this situation to have developed, is the demise of the family physician and the bonding relationship between the GP and the patient, due to a variety of reasons, including litigation. I agree entirely. Even if the GP is not entirely up-to-date (and it is almost impossible to keep entirely updated all the time), the presence of that one person who can serve as a guide, who in difficult situations can help make a guided-choice, can make all the difference.
Many young couples and nuclear families are eschewing the GP even in Mumbai. They go directly to consultants, often by asking friends and family. Except probably for problems related to the eyes, when you could directly go to the ophthalmologists, even going directly to a pediatrician can be fraught with problems. Irrespective of the so-called GP-consultant-lab nexuses, etc, there are enough checks and balances in place. No GP can afford to go wrong with his patients, because he will then lose the confidence of his patients and their families, who may never come back to him. No GP today can afford to lose his paying patients and therefore will rarely take the chance of referring his patients to consultants and hospitals who will not be able to deliver the necessary results. GPs have access to a large formal and informal knowledge-base and can speed up the process of getting appointments, arranging tests, helping in defining the further course of treatment, checking out and treating minor complications and reactions, getting hospital admissions and making sure that the hospital also delivers appropriate care. More importantly, they can even accompany the patient during difficult procedures or consultant visits.
Exercising choices in medicine is not the same as with tourist destinations and car purchases. Even if the available information is inadequate, the worst that can happen is that the car may not be upto the mark or the holiday may be a bit inferior to the one expected. A bad choice in medicine may maim or kill.
In short, patients need to have more information, but they must develop the confidence and faith to let their treating doctors make the choices for them. Where a choice probably needs to be exercised, is in choosing the right GP.
Posted by bhavinj at 07:19 AM | Comments (3)
July 21, 2002
The Deteriorating Doctor-Patient Relationships - Who is to Blame?
A couple of weeks back, the Sunday edition of Times of India carried a completely one-sided article on how the doctor-patient relationship has changed for the worse with examples of doctors cheating patients, starting with some Calcutta-based physicians who had been sentenced to three-months rigorous imprisonment for some supposed negligence.
A week later, "The Sunset" carried this article.
THE DETERIORATING DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP
News Network Service
There is no denying that the doctor-patient relationship is deteriorating. Rank commercialization and deteriorating moral standards in society have had their effect also on the medical profession and the practice of medicine. Doctors have been brought into the ambit of the consumer court and in the last few years, cases involving doctors have gone up significantly. An idea of where things are going can be obtained from some examples of court cases currently up for hearing.
1. Doctor A versus Patient X
Patient X came to Doctor A, a radiologist for a CT examination of the abdomen and pelvis. The cost was Rs. 10,000, which patient X agreed to pay. Proof of this was his signature on the consent form that also listed the charges for the study. Patient X paid half the money and kept the other half balance, saying he would pay while collecting the report. In the meantime, Doctor A called Doctor Y, the patient's family physician and told him the study was normal. Doctor Y informed patient X about this. Patient X decided not to collect the report. Doctor A's staff called Patient X at least 10 times, but the patient refused to come to collect the report and to pay the balance amount. He made a police complaint, but to no avail. With no further help forthcoming, the doctor filed a suit in court for recovery of money.
2. Doctor C versus Patient Z
This is a very interesting case. Patient Z took an appointment with Doctor C's centre for a CT scan, to be scheduled at 7.00AM in the morning. The centre took down the patient's telephone number and the day before the examination twice called to confirm the appointment. In the meantime, another patient W wanted an urgent CT scan appointment, but could not be adjusted since the day's bookings were full. Patient W decided to get the scan done elsewhere. On the day of the study, patient Z did not turn up till 7.15AM. The centre called his place only to find that he was still asleep and didn't feel like getting up to come for the study - his wife said, "he will come at 8.00AM when he wakes up." The centre cancelled his appointment and the doctor decided to sue the patient for recovery of lost income. As the lawyer puts it. "the patient showed complete disrespect for the system and because of this, the doctor also lost income from another patient who could have been accommodated if patient Z had been more responsible."
3. The Indian Insurance Company versus Patient M
Patient M had an MRI examination done for the spine and Doctor F's report mentioned a comparison with a previous scan performed two years ago for the same problem, which was a disc herniation. The patient this time got operated within 20 days of the MRI scan and decided to use his medical insurance, which he had procured just a year and a half ago. The agent told him that the claim would be rejected since the MRI report made it clear that this was a long-standing, two-year old problem. He came back to Doctor F and asked him to change the report so as not to reflect the comparison. Doctor F refused saying that it would not be correct. The patient abused him and also pressurized the operating surgeon to talk to Doctor F. Fed up and fearing future problems, doctor F filed a complaint about patient M with The Indian Insurance Company. In the meantime, patient M had forged the doctor's signature on another report and submitted the claim. When the insurance company realized this, they filed a suit against the patient for misrepresentation, doctor F being their star witness.
4. Doctor N versus relatives of Patient E
Patient E came to doctor N, an oncologist, with a diagnosis of presumed carcinoma ovary. Since the tumor was big, the patient was explained that the best course would be to take chemotherapy to reduce the tumor size, after which a surgery would be necessary. The relatives were explained this in detail. An uncle of patient E, a very influential individual, pooh-poohed "all this allopathy" and convinced the patient and her husband that chemotherapy itself would kill her. Instead he started them on some "Umerkhadi" medicine. After three months, the patient found her abdomen distending; her cancer had spread into the peritoneum. She went back to the oncologist, who was extremely upset. This had happened once too often and frustrated she decided to file a suit against the uncle who was responsible for converting a potentially treatable situation into a non-treatable disease.
5. Doctor P versus relatives of patient S
Patient S was admitted with acute severe pancreatitis in the ICU of the hospital under doctor P. The relatives were explained in detail that this condition was potentially fatal and worse than having a "heart attack" or "stroke" - the treatment would also cost upwards of around Rs 3 lakhs. The doctor visited the patient at least twice a day, made sure that the necessary investigations were carried out, had him operated for necrosectomy and as his vital organs started failing one by one, made sure that the best specialists for the other organs were available. Despite his best efforts, the patient died after three weeks. He had constantly been in touch with the relatives and appraised them of the situation everyday. When the doctor told them of the patient's death, the brother and father pushed him around outside the ICU and loudly blamed him for the patient's death. Doctor P was upset and shocked; assuming this was a reaction to the death, he let it go. However two days after the cremation, they barged into this office and again abused him. Doctor P could not take this any longer; he filed a police complaint for physical harassment and then a suit against them for physical and mental abuse.
6. Doctor O versus The Morning Times
The Morning Times ran a report of how Doctor O had killed a patient during a CT guided biopsy. According to the report, the biopsy needle went into the heart, puncturing it and the patient bled to death. Doctor O was never approached for his side of the story and the entire article was based on the information given by the patients and their relatives. The article went on to blame the doctor and cast aspersions on his method of working and his ethics. What the article did not mention was that the autopsy done two days after the incident had shown a completely coincidental myocardial infarct (heart attack), which had nothing to do with the procedure. When doctor O went to meet the editor of the newspaper with this information, the editor kept him waiting for three hours and was then extremely rude and abusive, the abuse carrying over to the entire medical profession. Doctor O approached the Consultant Doctors Association. When the CDA tried to meet the editor, they were given the same rude treatment and the editor and journalist refused to file a retraction; they refused to even look at the evidence. With no recourse, doctor O with the help of the CDA filed a suit against the relatives of the patient and the Morning Times for a compensation of Rs 5 crores, for slander and resultant loss of practice.
There are many more such cases in the civil and criminal courts.
Doctors are soft targets; they are highly educated and intelligent, but not organized and unionized. Everyone, the patients, the insurance companies, the hospitals and their administrators, the government, the taxmen, etc., tries to take advantage of them. It is time they fought back and it is likely that we will see more cases like these in the future.
Posted by bhavinj at 06:58 AM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2000
How to Become a Doctor in Four Weeks
Here is a roadmap of how to become a doctor in four weeks or less and to earn more than conventional physicians and surgeons.
First, take a reiki course for a week and become a reiki-master or expert. Understand the nuances of the posturing and hand movements and the importance of correct jargon. Once this has been mastered, take a small course in pranic-healing. At the same time, start reading books or surf the net for information on vastushastra and feng-shui or attend classes. Along with this, pick up tomes on gem therapy, aromatherapy and magnetotherapy and attend classes if required.
This should not take more than four weeks.
Once you are ready, start first with your friends and family. Initially, take on only those people who have coughs and colds, vague aches and pains, backache, general discomfort, heartburn, and conditions, which generally don't get enough attention from practitioners of conventional medicine. Spend time with them, while practicing the various movements and spouting the correct jargon. Encourage them to talk about themselves and don't be surprised when they come up with a lot of repressed feelings, buried fears and angst about their lives and the futures of their families and themselves. Impress them by correctly pinpointing their problems, citing causes such as lack of sleep, faulty diet, "fast" lives, occasional depression, etc. all of which will be present to some degree or another in the majority of people.
In no time, they will start recommending you to their other friends and acquaintances and you will get known. Become serious, adopt a slightly superior but not condescending or patronizing air and charge the earth. The more expensive you are, the better you will be considered. Get yourself a consulting room, either in your house or outside and design it to look extremely ethnic with low-settees, earthy colors, incense, pots, curtains, brocade, zari, malas and the like.
When the first really serious patient comes in, give an impression that you understand the problem in detail. Ask for all the papers, read the doctors' notes, the pathology and radiology reports and make some pithy comments like, "Hmm...Whew...Tough...". Even if you don't have the foggiest idea of where the liver is or what the function of the pancreas is or can't pronounce medulla oblongata, don't worry. Just keep muttering " modern medicine...tch tch" and keep shaking your head. When the patient or the relatives look at you wide-eyed with expectation and hope, tell them "Don't worry...we'll set things right". Don't ever tell them to stop the treatment they have been advised by the practitioners of modern medicine, whether it involves drugs or surgery. If the treatment is successful, take the credit for it, by saying that it worked only because of all the reiki, etc that was applied. If the treatment is unsuccessful and the patient worsens, blame it on "allopathic" medicine and its ills and the "hard" drugs and "cutting" surgery. You can't go wrong!
You can further impress the patients by keeping their pathology reports and x-rays and doing reiki on them saying that by targeting the diseases from the reports, you can heal them faster.
You will get disbelievers and relatives trying to expose you. The more educated they are, the easier it is to convert them. Drop words like "cosmic energy", "positive biofeedback", "yin and yang", "forces of life", "negative and positive energy", "environmental pollution" and if you are a little smarter, "global heating", "ozone hole", "man ruining Gaia, earth's life force" and "El Nino", mix everything into a goulash that is so complicated, it just cannot be challenged, add anecdotes of miraculous healing either by you or preferably by your reiki-master along with phone numbers and references of the "master" (not the patient, silly) and you'll probably have them slurping the palms of your hands.
Never promise too much! Don't say that you can make a man paralytic for 20 years, walk, but do say that "I can make him feel better and maybe in the future he might start walking". Who knows what miracles modern medicine might throw up in the future...at that time, if you are still around, you can take the credit for everything. Don't ever tell them to stop taking their conventional treatment, or you will be doomed.
Add a "Dr" before your name to make you sound big. No one will say anything to you in India. Also add a few initials like MR (master of reiki), PHE (pranic healing expert), VC (vastu consultant) and get an MRSH (Member of the Royal Society of Health), a certificate from Britain (the foreign stamp) which even a Municipal sweeper can get provided he pays the necessary pounds in fees.
Without the ten to fifteen years of solid hard work that conventional doctors have to go through, without exams, without the struggle to establish a practice and a name, without any knowledge whatsoever of anatomy or physiology, without even knowing how to pronounce medical words, you will be able to become a successful doctor. It just needs some savvy and street-smarts.
All this in just four weeks! And never compromise on your charges. Ever! And always charge more than conventional doctors, to justify your rapport with the universal soul as well as to make as much money as possible while the going is good.
Of course, you could also pay some money to an obscure University in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh and get an actual MBBS certificate...that would give you even more legitimacy. Imagine patients saying, "an MBBS doctor advising reiki, pranic healing, etc...there must be something in all this." Of course, this can only be started in an obscure place where no one knows that you haven't actually done an MBBS. But there are enough such places in India, aren't there!
Posted by bhavinj at 06:56 AM | Comments (1)
February 27, 2000
The Holistic Treatment Soup
Breast cancer with liver metastases. It was like a death sentence for Seema. The prognosis was poor and the expected suffering, considerable, but she decided to give it a good fight. After multiple consultations and tests, she found a good, kind oncologist, who took her through five cycles of a rigorous chemotherapy regime. Three months later the lump in her breast disappeared and the liver metastases regressed.
Seema threw a small party for her friends and family. As the party started drawing to a close, many of her close friends and family gravitated into a circle around Seema, drawn together by their relationships with her and their contributions to her well being. A friend of hers, Nikita, who had just come down from London, was being introduced to all of them.
Nikita: It is a miracle, isn't it. The statistics were all against her, but she made it.
Uncle 1: Obviously. I spent days with her, performing reiki, channeling the universal life force energy over her body to drive away and kill the cancer cells. I even made my grandmaster perform long-distance reiki from Japan.
Uncle 2: If you say so, but I think it was my pranic healing that healed her. I used the chakras in my palm to revitalize her energy field. I even did advanced pranic healing using violet and electric violet energy instead of the usual white energy to realign her bioplasmic energy, which in turn healed her physical body.
Uncle 3: How can mere energy work! It is my urine therapy that cured her. I taught her how to drink her own urine first thing in the morning each day. She is not the first case of cancer cured by urine therapy.
Nikita: Yechh!
Uncle 3: There is nothing yechh about this. Urine has been used therapeutically in India for centuries and can cure everything from constipation to cancer. It even helps patients with AIDS. It is a sterile substance that contains thousands of nutrients; the only thing to be careful about is that the urine drunk should be a proper, clean mid-stream sample, collected first thing in the morning.
Aunt 1: Bull. What really helped is the magical leaf that I placed on her breast with a mudpack everyday. The lady who gave it to me told me that her own breast cancer fell out when she used it. Seema is just the last of many patients to benefit from this treatment.
Brother-in-law: I think it is my acupressure that worked. Pressing on a particular point on the foot is supposed to make cancers go away. And I think Seema quite enjoyed those daily massages. Eh, Seema?
Aunt 2: And what about my water-therapy? I made her drink eight cups of water every day in the morning; all that water must have drowned the cancer cells. It has been proved beyond doubt that hydrotherapy can treat hypertension, diabetes, hemorrhoids, stress and cancer.
Sister-in-law: Poof! The warm-water baths that I made her have are responsible for her cure. Sitting cross-legged in a basin and applying warm water over one's body is supposed to drive away negative energy. That is exactly what happened; the negative cancer disappeared.
Distant uncle: What has actually worked is the powder from Santu Baba in Umerkhadi, which I had asked her to eat after lunch every day. It is a very powerful herbal, natural medicine that has cured a large number of patients with cancers the world over. Don't you remember Seema's cousin's father-in-law with stomach cancer who is still alive after taking this powder?
And this went on.
One man, with a slight bemused expression on his face, remained silent throughout. When Nikita noticed this, she jokingly asked.
Didn't you contribute anything to her remission?
Silent man: I am not sure. I am just her oncologist.
Posted by bhavinj at 06:53 AM | Comments (0)
