A Journal Entry of a Pediatrician

Dear Diary,

I am about to splatter my intellectual diarrhoea upon you as always, so brace up for what is about to be written on your pristine page!

Thursday, 4th March 2004

I had an averagely horrid day. (So what's new, eh? ... snicker.) Nishrin and I had a spat, (the maid looked the other way, but I bet she was laughing behind our backs) while the two daughters got ready to go to school.

Did you know that they say Marriage is a life sentence? Of course you do, I read that as a footnote on the 19th February page inside you!

Well, as it happened, I insisted on packing sliced cucumber for the kids, and Nishrin, my ... er ... better half ... wanted to send some curd along with rice and gravy. As it is time is short: we wake up at seven, and the kids leave at eight, so there is no time for niceties.

Then I mentioned something about staying as cool as a cucumber and also something like "Why don't you apply that bloody curd on your face, it'll make it look less like a vixen's!" ... and the Universe around me exploded.

While the children kept telling me to "Hurry, Dad, or we'll miss the bus", I was busy exchanging the latest expletives with Nishrin. I could write some here, but I don't know, maybe the stink will make you puke all over yourself. So I am going to pass that chance, thank you.

(By the way, the children enjoyed a cucumber-dunked-in-curd salad.)

The morning clinic was so-so. I heard the most original comment by a mother in the clinic today. When I asked her if her child's fever was high, she said it was higher than her husband's piss when he aimed it at the ceiling the other day in a drunken state. Oh, to be a Pediatrician is very taxing indeed! The next baby then went and wet me all over the coat when I was about to examine his pinky (his mother asked me to, I swear).

My secretary stayed absent in the evening. Her sister called to say that she was "unwell" and had "backache". I know she's dating that crook who keeps dialling blank calls to my clinic. I mean the calls are blank when I lift the receiver inside my cabin, but they aren't when the sec. picks up the phone outside between her busy nail-painting and polishing schedule.

At about 6 p.m. I received a letter by courier: it was attached to a large parcel that looked like a big red lollipop. The letter read,

Dear Doctor,
Thank you for patronising our CEFACTEX. We hope that our representative was able to answer all your queries when he visited you last week. In appreciation of your continued support of Cefactex, the child-friendly antibiotic, we are pleased to send you this gift.

Do send us your valuable feed-back in the enclosed Postage-prepaid envelope and oblige us.
-Yours truly, Manoj Singh, Regional Marketing Manager, XYZ PharmaCare.

Surprise, surprise: the lollipop smelled of strawberries, indeed, but it was NOT a lollipop. It was a package that resembled one. Inside it were a dozen foot-long writing pencils! Attached to each was a tag that read: "SPECIALLY FOR YOU, MY DEAR." Initially I thought they had gone nuts, as what would I possibly do with ONE DOZEN pencils! Then, fleetingly, a thought occurred to me that they were meant for Nishrin. Uh, uh. NO. Finally, the light dawned on me: they were meant for me to give to my patients!

I laughed and laughed till my sides ached.

Later in the evening, I was called upon to see a 3-year old girl, Rekha. She had swallowed a 2-rupee coin and was playing very cool about it. It so transpired that her father was on the way to have a cup of tea from a road-side vendor (a half cup of tea is called cutting chai and generally costs Rs. 2) when the coin fell from his hand. His daughter, toddling merrily by his side, picked up the round shiny object and put it promptly into her mouth. When her father screamed at her, she got so jumpy that instead of removing the coin, she just gulped it down with fright! I knew that being a round smooth coin, it was unlikely to cause a major problem, but you know what really bugs me? Her father was less vocal about the possible harm that would come to her and more about how she spoiled his chance of a hot cuppa!

I think he'll really enjoy sitting with Rekha when she passes her stools for the next 1-2 days: I've told him to keep an eye out for the coin, which is sure to come "out" in a few days. Maybe he'll never, ever use a Rs. 2/- coin to buy anything in future! Ha ha! He deserves it.

That's all for today. Take an Alka-Seltzer before going to bed, my dear, I can see you are groaning with indigestion.

Good Night.