Couldn’t help sharing this piece by an ophthalmologist in Maharashtra. So familiar..

Fetishes in Ophthalmology
-written by Dr. Pranav Kodial, Dahanu

As ophthalmologists, we sometimes face challenging cases. Often, the accompanying relative being more challenging than the patient himself.

One day, the door of my consultation room opened, and the fragrance of an expensive perfume entered, followed by a man and a woman.

The man was in his early thirties, smug, overfed. His attire: ORIGINAL T-shirt & Bermudas by Nike and Reebok. Two and three sizes large for him, respectively.

His sister was a few years elder to him, a standard issue Indian small-town woman. Her attire: ORIGINAL Blouse & Sari by Khimjibhai Mattumal Sari Bhandar, Dahanu.

The former plonked the latter in my examination chair.

Mr. Bermudas grinned and introduced himself, emphasizing he was from Minneapolis. From the half-barbecued-half-skewered American accent, I had already guessed something like that.

As I started to examine her, he said, “Doc, please examine her in detail.”

Uhff! I stopped and shook my head in bewilderment.

Why hadn’t this brainwave come to me earlier? I realized I should immediately collapse on my knees in front of him, clutch his hands and drench them with my tears of gratitude for his profound, career-saving instruction.

Instead, I pretended not to hear him.

During the slit-lamp examination, he announced, “Doc, you can explain anything you want to me in your medical language. I worked in a pharmacy in the US for a few years, so I am as good as a doctor.”

Such statements merit either LOTS of response, or lots of silence. I chose the latter.

“Doc, do whatever tests you want. Money is no problem for me.”

“Hmm,” I said and continued with the examination, struggling to develop a visual AND auditory blind spot to this maggot.

After finishing with the patient, I turned to Bermudas and opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me short. “Doc, what do you think about the efficacy of Epsilon-Gamma-123 in treating Age Related Macular Degeneration? The molecule was invented just last week in the US. I read everything about it on the Internet.”

My eyebrows rose an inch and I gazed at him in admiration. An M.Ch. from Google Medical School, no less. Deserving of my deepest respects.

I put on my most regretful expression and shook my head. “No,” I said.

“No? You don’t think it is an effective treatment?”

“No, I don’t think about it at all.”

He sat up; his eyebrows furrowed. “Why?”

I nodded sagely. “You have to live life like that. So many things enter it, like constipation. The past is past. Let it go. Obsessing over it will give you impacted stools.”

The furrows deepened, threatening to bury into his brain. “What?”

“Nothing. Your sister’s eyes are absolutely fine. She only requires a change in her glasses.”

He recovered his bearings and looked shocked. “The examination is over? Aren’t you going to do a UBM? And an OCT? And an FFA? Doc, money is no problem for me.”

I wanted to ask him the full-forms and spellings of those words.

Instead, I asked, “Why do you think we should do all those tests? They are not needed in her case.”

He shook his head. “No, Doc,” he threw a condescending look around the room, “if you don’t have that equipment, refer us to a place where they do. I told you, money is no problem for me.”

I sighed. It was too tempting—to suggest him a very good place where he could shove his money. But the sun didn’t shine there, and he would lose it somewhere. Also, with his IQ, he would probably forget where he shoved it. With another rumored demonetization on the horizon, I didn’t want the fellow’s family to go bankrupt.

It also struck me that at the end of this examination, he would probably be offended that I charged him only 350 bucks. Folks like Bermudas consider such fees paltry and an insult to their own worth. The thought made me happy. “Ha, ha, ha,” I said.

“What?”

“Nothing. Something in my throat, so I coughed. Look, Mr. Bermudas, your sister’s eyes are absolutely fine. She doesn’t require all those tests.”

“But…but,” he sputtered, “I go to this so-and-so ophthalmologist in Minneapolis and I get ALL those tests done.”

“It’s very cold there. They are required to keep your eyeballs warm.”

“What?”

“Nothing, wait,” I said, and looked around.

Nowadays for many people, a doctor’s opinion isn’t important. A machine, preferably foreign and expensive and hi-tech, has to validate it. And it’s like a grotesque sexual fetish. The more toys the doctor uses, the greater the patient satisfaction.

I picked up my twenty-five-year-old mirror retinoscope—a short slim metal rod with a small circular mirror at its end. I held it up and looked at the woman’s eyes through the hole in the centre of the mirror.

With an Oscar-winning, doctor’s grave expression, I turned to Bermudas and said, “See, the omnimonolithic light spectrum transcolumnated into her eyes bypasses the Descemet’s membrane, causing a diffraction grating with the resultant sphigocoherence highlighting her Muller’s cells. Thus proving your sister’s eyes are normal.”

His jaw detached from its hinges and thudded on his chest.

“Expensive but useful instrument,” I said, tapping the retinoscope suavely, “a portable five-chip, cloud-linked Oculodigitosophistonanometer. Not too many around, though. It’s Swiss-made, limited edition. Launched just last month in Zurich. I was lucky to be chosen…”

I studied his face. Yes, it had worked. He looked like a mongrel who had bitten off a mouthful of an unknown something and was caught between whether to chew it or spit it out.

Also, my gibberish would keep him and the entire Google Medical School busy for a few weeks, I figured. Or at least until Bermudas returned to the US.

Maybe he would even go and pester his American ophthalmologist about getting tested with the Oculodigitosophistonanometer. And instantly get referred to a psychiatrist, which his insurance wouldn’t cover. What fun.

Before he recovered, I quickly gestured to my assistant to escort him and his sister outside politely, but firmly.

While leaving the hospital, he sent my assistant back inside, with a request for my email address. He said he was very keen to correspond with me about the latest advancements in ophthalmology.

I sent him a fake email address. Hopefully, it belonged to some website that would immediately reply with several life-enhancing offers including increasing the size of his body parts.

Especially his brain.

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