Must endure for an effective cure

After trying several homely treatments like hot water fomentation, infrared rays and also painkilling unguents for five days and finding no results in my sciatic ache, I made an appointment with a specialist.

I reached the hospital where I complained of the ache in my hip to the specialist. He asked me to lie on a bed in front of him. He started tapping me on the back of my knees and at different spots on my hip with a tiny hammer. Fear of a sciatic surgery gripping me hard, I asked him if my ailment was anything serious and if I would have to have surgery. “How old are you?” came the question. “Sixty-six” I humbly replied. “Your hip is also as old as you are,” said the specialist as if I were not aware of it. Stifling a sharp retort and managing to summon a fake smile on my, I got up and sat on a stool beside the middle-aged medical practitioner, waiting for his prescription. Soon receiving a slip bearing the names of a couple of tablets and an ointment I quit the spot in a huff. The medicines he had prescribed for me cured me of the discomfort within a day or two, his remark however about the age of my hip continued to bother me.

What left me more abashed than all this is my bitter experience with a dermatologist I had later approached for a positive cure of a small itchy spot on my left knee. After slathering some skin ointments on the affected part for four or five days and not getting appreciable relief I decided to consult a dermatologist.

When I approached the specialist in a hospital, he told me to be seated beside him on a chair. Rolling up the left leg of my pants and mildly scratching the spot I was about to be out with my complaint. At once he asked me, “could you please do me a favour?” Quite bemused I asked him, “what?”

“Please go out, scratch the knee to your heart’s content and then come back to me”, he said with undue humility. Quick to twig that he wanted me not to scratch the itchy spot under his very nose, I stopped the rubbing action in a jiff and showed him the affected part.

Lowering his spectacles a tad from the bridge of his nose and shrinking his eyebrows he looked at my knee and soon handed to me a slip with the names of a tablet and an unguent scribbled on it.

I quit the spot given the quip by the physician. I remained content musing that even great men have feet of clay. The itchy patch on my knee spotlessly vanished in two days but the taunting remark lingered on in my mind for long.