The Health Check.

I enjoy sharing my medical complaints with friends, relatives, neighbours, on Facebook, and trying out home remedies before any pain/ nausea rushes to a ‘real’ doctor (= at least MBBS). Drinking concoctions of tulsi leaves or dalchini twigs, meditating before dawn, sniffing crushed neem leaves, chewing raw turmeric or the inside of a banana stem, swallowing garlic cloves and sprouted methi seeds, anything that indicates ‘saamkey natoorall’ can only bring benefit, nee? If it’s gummy like steamed bhindi or bitter like karela juice, all the better.  

My contemporaries discuss flatulence, variations in blood pressures, medicines that go with them, ‘sugar’ and ‘kiten tein kull naa, punn jivaak borem dissa naa’ (=“don’t understand what it is, but makes me feel unwell”). That vague something a patient can’t describe, which gives ulcers to family physicians. Family physicians, also called general practitioners, are members of that getting-extinct breed which tells you bluntly that your ‘stomach-upset’ is just indigestion and not a heart attack. Contrary-wise, when you take an rash lightly, (s)he chides you for taking so long to ask for help.

Kind ex-colleagues and worrying advertisements nudged me to do a preventive screening of detectable medical ailments. I am, after all, in the teatime of my life.

Going for a Health-Check is like planning a cruise to Alaska. Cheaper. I thumbed through several glossy brochures/pamphlets to choose a hospital. I had to choose the package depending on age and tests. They (the packages, not the tests) had names like Pearl, Ruby, Diamond in one and Basic, Basic Plus, Special and Comprehensive in another. I had to decide which of the tests I wanted done. Tension saamken. Suppose I chose a ‘basic’. The first test read ‘Blood Group’. Now if I were to do the same package annually (as recommended), why would I want to find out my Blood Group over again? Would I get a discount if I said I didn’t want it done multiple times?

Liver function, heart function, kidney function, bones, eyes, ears, skin, teeth, ovary: what did I want checked? Should I tick them all? The headache vanished when I decided to go by the price instead.   

Overnight fasted, udok i piyun naa, I made myself hazir and stood in line with other yawning fellow health-conscious Goans. One woman (I refuse to call an adult female ‘lady’ unless she proves herself to be one, irrespective of what the toilet labels her to be) told me she had opted for a superior package: “It has a bone density test. One thing I don’t want to get is osteoporosis.” What was the illness she did want to get? I wondered, but held my tongue. She and her companion were from Mumbai. Goans from Mumbai, they nodded at me, lest I had any doubt. I’m used to such introductions on the Mandovi Express. I nodded back understandingly: there’s an unspoken bond of sisterhood that explains “it’s cheaper to get these things done here, you know”. They hadn’t included taxi fares in their maths, I giggled inwardly, and continued (admirably for me) to hold my tongue.

We watched each other getting pricked in the elbow, our blood being whisked away in small tubes to some mysterious place. We shared time outside the ultra-sonography room, our bladders competitively waiting, hoping that the other would not fill up first.

“Doctor,” I overheard someone say, “I want a cancer test done.”

“For which cancer?”

“Means? Cancer is cancer, no? I want a test to see if I have cancer.”

“There are different tests for different cancers: breast, uterine, ovarian, cervical. We do them all.”

“No one test?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

The sound I heard next, I believe, is of hair being torn off a scalp. This must have been the umpteenth ‘why’ question the patient (if pun, then unintended) doctor must have heard that morning. “Why do you need to do an ecg if you’re doing a stress test?” “Why can’t you directly do a CT scan if the x-ray isn’t showing you all the details?” “Why do I have to wait so long for a report?” “Why is this blood test more expensive than that?” “Don’t you have a buy one get one free scheme for consultations? Why not?”

At the end of the ‘package’, each had found some anomaly. Except me. As we bid each other warm and loving ‘byes, one of them comfortingly said to me: “Never mind. Health is wealth, they say. You may have better luck next time.”

For the third time, haanve kaany mhanoom na.