Dismissed by the doctor

Taureef Mohammed

AFTER THEIR patients cross a certain age, doctors stop thinking.

I carry my 94-year-old mother the other day by a specialist, a kidney specialist.

Everything I ask the doctor, the doctor tell me is age. I wanted to ask the doctor: how it is that my father is the same age as my mother and he don’t have all these problems that my mother have that you telling me caused by age? Tell me: how that could be?

That don’t make any sense; I am no doctor, but I am no fool either.

She falling down all the time age. She losing weight – age. She shaky – age. Everything is age. Oh gosh, man.

The doctor watch the blood results, say the creatinine was good, and that she was doing fine.

How you could watch a 94-year-old woman with a blue-black bruise on her forehead from a fall a few days ago and come to the conclusion that she is doing fine?

He was really just a kidney doctor – he ent see nothing else. I swear my mother could have been in a coma with a normal blood test, and that kidney specialist would have said everything is fine, continue doing what you doing.

Anyway, that is just one story. I have more. These days it have plenty old people in the village. Everybody in the village getting old and dying one after the next, and is a pity to see how these old people is just get dismissed by everybody.

Last month, my uncle – he was in a bad place at home, fighting up with dementia – he take in sick and had to go to the hospital. My cousin say the doctor say is the dementia and everything else that happening at home.

My cousin try to explain that his father living with dementia for the last five years, and take in sick two days ago – how it could be the dementia? My cousin was hoping to hear something more specific: pneumonia, heart attack, gastro – something must be wrong.

The doctor say things probably reach a tipping point. My cousin say the doctor must know what she talking about.

Five days later, time to go home, my cousin say he read on the discharge paper: “Most responsible diagnosis: Sepsis.”

Sepsis, you know – sepsis! People is die from that. It is a good thing somebody thought to look at the old man a little more closely, and see that it wasn’t just an old man with dementia. A little bit again we would have had another wake in the village.

But the cardiologist who see my father last year take the crown. I had was to put him in his place.

My father went by him because his legs was swelling and somebody say it could be the heart.

The cardiologist ent touch my father. At first, I say that is a good sign – things must be good for you not to bother to put your hands on the patient.

At the end of the 30-minute appointment, the cardiologist list out one set of tests: echocardiogram, treadmill stress test, blood tests.

I don’t know where I get the courage, but I say: “Why don’t you ask him first if he wants to do all those tests?”

“Well, I assumed if he came to see me, he would want to do the tests.”

He pushed the button.

“Well, you made a wrong assumption. He came to hear what you think. So, why don’t you explain to him what you are thinking and what all these tests are for? He was a school principal – he has some sense.”

My father tell him how he live a full life, and he ent Brian Lara: he ent looking for the century – he just want to be comfortable at this stage.

The stiff cardiologist loosen up and prescribe some water pills for the swelling.

Let me tell you something: it not easy having old parents: the medications – the list longer than a grocery list; the doctors’ appointments, the money, the hassle, the guilt, the anger, the frustration, the sadness. It not easy.

So when I make an effort, and I see other people not making an effort, it does trip me off.

And I expect better from doctors. Don’t mind some of them might be specialists. At the end of the day, they are still doctors.

And people go to the doctor to get diagnosed and treated – not to get dismissed.

Taureef Mohammed is a physician from TT working in Canada

E-mail: taureef_im@hotmail.com