Friday, December 10, 2010

The Mental Journey 3

The way the history and the patient are looked upon can change the entire course of therapy and the thereby, the life of the patient.

History = Clinical diagnosis

In some instances I did feel that that there were heavy lapses in the research areas and a great lot is yet to be unveiled. What I despised the most while attending the Psychiatry clinics was that, most of the final diagnoses were based on the history and the doctor’s interpretation as specific clinical investigations do not yet, exist; making it biased.
For once, give it a thought. If you happen to impress a Psychiatrist well enough, whatever you see could be termed as visual hallucinations and whatever you hear are auditory hallucinations! Even a child not wanting to go to school and play is pre-morbidity! Gross and eventful!
But there are doctors efficient enough to see those thin lines and brainy enough to analyze the understanding of those firing neurons. Still, I await that day when I shall be relieved of the slightest doubt that a person can never be wrongly placed in a mental asylum. After all, everything is a mind’s perspective. Even happiness fits perfectly to be called a mental ailment!

BRACED-UP!

She sat a step diagonally higher to me munching away the 20mg Diclofenac tablet, occasionally tossing it between her teeth, probably convincing those agelessly old archeological tools that the pain will soon be gone. Now, she held that half dispersed pill between her teeth and broke it into a perfect two. I couldn’t help noticing it. I am guessing that the taste would be something like the color of the tablet itself.
I still remember that day when I had the ceremony to undertake the vow to sparkle each time I smile, sporting those stainless steel hangings in the oral cavity to manipulate stuff- yet another molded medical invention!
Staring at the giant picture overhanging the wall in front of me, I sat in the hyper- specialized chair, which is everything for the dental clinic and the dentist himself, whatever it is, just say it- out patient Rx, operation theatre, anything and everything.
The picture was of a beautiful village woman carrying a pot of water, teeth, milk (jus’ guessed it) carved out of a really big tooth. ‘Soo huge!’ that it must be a property of a really big carnivorous non-human, I thought.
Like an ant sting, the sharp needle with a sharper hole pierced through my hard red jelly and blew out my cheeks like I was with my mouth-FULL. Then, to my surprise, he struck tongs into my mouth and with all his visible strength pulled out a huge milky bar out which looked very similar to the one in the picture. It’s like the iceberg concept thing, I wondered, with the entire blood brimming.
He pulled out the 4 pre-molars to finally defy the very nature’s human dental principles.
A lotta things in life change after this. You get a new brush with a mid-partitioned bristle-less wave, a new tooth paste with a worse color (placebo effect, maybe) but you teeth still stink, anyway, so I suggest you better mix both the pastes. It takes much longer to brush and makes one more efficient to piss off other neighboring brushers and the ones waiting in line for the washbasin.
Then what? Years pass in waiting, you grow half in size outta starvation and after check up after check up, you are promoted to a temporary wire brace which now makes it harder to even talk and then you lose it all one day only to worry about getting it all back again, very possible with the shorter Australian wire technique and a lil’ more safer with the longer American technique!

p.s. One hell of an experience!