Doctor Humour

They say a friend in need is a friend indeed. What if your close friend is a doctor? Of course, you will rush to him if some major or even minor medical condition crops up. Or exercising your friendly rights you make a quick phone call and your doctor friend straightaway walks into your room without bothering to observe the courtesy of ringing the door bell.

This is how I often approach my doctor friend Arun. “I am suffering from mild chest pains. In addition to this, I have to struggle with my sleep tossing and turning in the bed,” I complain somewhat peevishly to Arun. He does not put his stethoscope on my chest but begins to engage in a light banter. I then reiterate my problem with some extra firmness to draw his attention to the bothersome issue. But he still continues with his chitter chatter that leaves me annoyed all the more.

“I get restless nights and sweaty palms,” I tell him. Perhaps my doctor friend cannot extract his consultation fee from me. This is why he is just dilly dallying, I think. But the third time when I cut him short in his frivolous round of gossips with a friendly snub, he puts a check on the flow of his incessant talk and begins to do his diagnosis. Now he has sensed the gravity of my situation and begins to conducts his examination with a semblance of some seriousness .

I am curious to know about what ailment I am afflicted with. But before he delivers his diagnosis, I try to put my words into his mouth. “Are there some cardiac issues I am grappling with?” I utter the phrase “cardiac issues” with a clear shakiness in my speech and a just developed crisscross of wrinkles on my face due to the mounting inside anxiety. Or have I got inflamed lungs is my next query. Now it is Arun’s turn to get peeved but unlike me he does not bring his annoyance on his face. Calmly holding my hand, he says, "You have no ailment of any such sort. You are only suffering from “intellectual syndrome”.

Well-versed with the words like “intellect” and “intellectual”, I cogitate what is this “intellectual syndrome” my friend is referring to? “Be specific,” I sternly say. “Shiv, you are prone to overthinking and make a mountain out of a mole hill.” He drags his prescription pad near and begins to scribble in his illegible handwriting as if defying all the rules of calligraphy.

While going back home with the note of prescription, I make some serious attempts to decipher his squiggly hand-writing. Though unlike an efficient chemist, I fail to make any head way through the labyrinth of his serpentine lines but reaching home when I accidentally turn over the leaf, I am left amazed. Usually doctors don’t write their prescription at the back side. But something was written there also. And much to my surprise, it was legible. The medicine for my ailments prescribed at the other side reads “Rx Wife”. Thereon, I am unable to stifle my chuckles over the diagnosis of my doctor friend.