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Medicine is inundated with tales that encompass the entire spectrum of human emotions. There is joy, grief, trust, fear, hope, not to mention the unexpected. The human body never ceases to amaze both the patient and doctor, each leaving an indelible impact on the other.
While patients primarily remember the doctors who saved their lives or rid them of their afflictions, doctors often reminisce about the interactions that made them laugh. Consultations are mostly austere; so the humorous ones are those that come more readily to mind. And those are what Dr Adi Nazir (pictured) reflected upon when isolated in a locked room while afflicted with Covid. These interactions are the genesis of this engaging 36-page paperback, Hilarious Moments in a Surgeon’s Life. Printed and published by Spenta Multimedia, the book takes less than half an hour to read. I kept returning to a few of the stories only to realize that some of the ludicrous stuff that happens today occurred even half a century ago!
The doctor regales readers with a compendium of 19 light-hearted, contagious and compassionate tales spanning over five decades as a general surgeon. He tops them up with a few limericks on human genitalia. We learn of the patient whose loosened penile dressing made him appear to have a falling penis and the lady with the breast abscess who was eager to lactate only from the normal breast, until she was told by her husband that it wasn’t a tap from which hot and cold water could emanate at will!
Nazir narrates his jovial experiences with patients from the Middle East who thronged Indian clinics in the 1970s and 80s, mostly wanting more vigorous zig-zag (code for sex). One such patient, after receiving a prostate massage (treatment for infection of the prostate, also known as prostatitis), brought along his friend the next day to try it because he had enjoyed it so much. "My friend — do same-same for him!” he instructed. And who can forget the patient who absconded with the doctor’s anal dilator (possibly for the pleasure it provided?).
There are stories of how patients counted the number of stitches they had received — and successfully bet that figure on the then popular gambling game matka!
The narrations are interspersed with interesting trivia such as the hospital that did not allow vasectomies because they wanted the Parsi population to increase. I can’t help but think that these instances could have been the bedrock on which Parsi nataks were based.
Being a surgeon myself, I have come to the conclusion that it is not the money that one earns or the fame that determines a surgeon’s success. Nor is it the number of times one is published in medical journals or newspapers or even a patient’s "word” vouching for a doctor. What counts is the validation from one’s colleagues who opt to have their near and dear ones operated on or treated by them. Nazir ends with an anecdote about how his then teacher Dr Rustom Irani called him a butcher when he first saw him operate. He took it upon himself to train Nazir, and when Irani and his wife both needed surgery it was Nazir who operated on them.
Well done, sir.       

 

Dr MAZDA K. TUREL