13
Dec

The joy of reading, the right book!

Last Tuesday, an elderly gentleman walked into my consulting room and introduced himself as Suryanarayana Rao, a retired engineer, who had served in many States, across the country.
He said that he was a full ninety-two years old but to me he seemed only to be a full seventy-two at the most, going by the energy and enthusiasm his smile radiated and the erect and upright carriage with which he strode into my room, like a soldier, still in service.
He very eagerly extended his hand but I very politely refused to shake it, excusing myself by saying that a doctor was not the best of persons to shake hands with, especially while he was at his work. But I assured him that we would certainly shake hands every time we met, if we happened to meet anytime, at any other place, in the future.
To this he said that he was not at all apprehensive about catching an infection from me because in the past fifty years, he never once had any occasion to see any doctor for treatment of any ailment, major or minor. But he said that once before those fifty years of good health, he had needed a doctor’s help just once, when he was bitten by a stray dog, as he was riding to work, on his motorcycle.
That was when I reassured him that the consequences of being bitten by stray dogs were no longer as painful as they had been in the days when he was bitten. I explained to him that unlike in the distant past, when a victim of dog bite had to receive a full course of fourteen, very painful injections around the navel, dog bite victims, even when badly bitten, could now be managed with exactly half the number of injections, which were almost painless!
Here I would like to digress a little from my narration and clarify that when I talk of injections being painless in the present era, I’m only talking of all others to whom I prescribe them. When it comes to myself taking any injection, however trivial, I am a real dodger. That is why I always used to dread the mandatory cholera vaccinations that used to be administered to us in our school days, with the onset of the summer months, just before our exams were due. That is how scared I am of being at the wrong end of the hypodermic needle.