Tamms asks a question that has disturbing her for a while, “What’s bacon made from?”
“Pig,” I say.
“And sausage?”
“Another pig,” I say and chuckle. She doesn’t.
Tamms has the sense of humour of an overflowing ashtray. And I say this with love. And a bit of a chuckle.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I sometimes ask just to check if she hasn’t picked the socialites craze on her radar.
“A mother and a doctor,” she’s always says. I thought she’d stop saying that eventually but she hasn’t. She wants to be a mother and a doctor. I always wonder if it’s going to be in that order. I hope she becomes a doctor first because then she might not find time to be a mother; she might get obsessed with ridding the world of cancer and TB and not have enough time to meet any nice men. You love your daughter but you really hope she doesn’t meet any men when she grows up. Or if she does, she just keeps meeting the type of men who remove their shoes on a date. Or eat a burger and leave the buns. Or men who eat salad. I hope she meets all that dredge and comes to my feet and sighs resignedly, “Papa, it’s impossible to meet any decent men in this city, all they do is remove their shoes on dates and talk about calorie intake?”
“God has a man for you, darling, he will come…” I will say and try not add, “shoeless.”
The other day we were at Aga Khan (and this is not related to buns or men who remove their shoes) because Kim was green around the gills (more on this later). An acquaintance saw me and walked over to say hey and he said excitedly, “Oh, this is Tamms, right?” He said hello and shook Tamms’ hand for a beat too long as Tamms smiled bashfully and looked at him like he was a child trafficker. Later she asked me, “How did he know my name?” and I said “Because I write about you sometimes,” and she said, “Where, in the newspaper?” “No, in my blog” and just before she could ask what a blog was, the door to the elevator opened and a very old Indian man with a shock of white long hair – looking like something from Lord of the Rings – was wheeled out, head slightly bobbing to one side . She stared at him. I stared at him. Kim stared at him with his mouth open. (He has adenoids). Riding up the elevator she asked, “Was I born here?” And I said, “Not in this elevator, but on the second floor of this building.”
She didn’t smile.
One day she will laugh at something I say. It’s amazing how as men we like when a woman laughs at something we said. I mean, here I am always bending over backwards to try make an 8-year old laugh yet she remains so unmoved by my quips. Does she not know she is killing my self esteem, does she not know that she is sending me to a life of salad?
Several people have asked me, “Do you know how pissed off Tamms will be when she becomes a teenager and she reads all these things you wrote about her?” Oh, I have a plan: From the minute she turns 12, I will only write nice flattering things about her. And I will delete some stuff, especially that ashtray barb. Such things might just drive her into the arms of the men I fear for her.
So anyway. The boy was under the weather. He was hospitalised because after they did that nebulisation thing that I hope one day is done to me because it looks cool, his chest was still shit so the doctor said he had to be spend the night. Then he got out after two days but his condition hadn’t change much; loss of appetite, lethargy etc. Because we are modern parents we decided to immediately seek a second opinion. I called a doctor friend of mine and she referred me to this other hospital to see this pediatrician who apparently is very good. I bundled the boy and the Nanny and Tamms in the car and off we went.
Here is the thing. When I was growing up, the world was full of Dr. Patel(s). In fact, the world was one big Dr. Patel. This was way back in the 80’s when they were still churned out in the thousands from a big medical plant in India. Back then there weren’t any fancy doctors with fancy tribal bracelets on their wrists. Maybe I was too young but I don’t remember young doctors with long hair or with tattoos of butterflies on their ankles. Doctors didn’t take out their phones to calculate your dosage. You didn’t see doctors congregating near the main desk, saying “You guy, jana we left that place at 3am…” Which is something you don’t want to hear you doctor say. You imagine your doctor to be superhuman, all knowing, ordained by the Lord to heal. You imagine your doctor to collect rare music, or play the violin in their private time, probably while they sit in the garden, a cup of lemongrass tea by their side. You don’t want a doctor complaining about a hangie. A hangie is ours. Back then, well, maybe they had massive hangies but doctors were Gods. They put a pill in your mouth and you swallowed, no questions asked. Peremptory.
Anyway, the Patels we saw were almost always as old as the hills. It seemed that if you were a Patel you were born old. I wondered if there were young Patels who made toys from wire. Just because of their age, you instantly felt better when they pried open your lower eyelid and looked for something in your whites. You sat there and when they asked you to say “aaah” you said, “aaah,” and they shone a small torch into your throat. They always had hooded eyes, large Adam’s apples and gold spectacles dangling from around their necks. And they were ever so gentle. They spoke gravely, like sages, like they just came down a mountain with news for humanity. They touched you tenderly, a warm leathery touch. They smelled of spice and some smelled of Taj Mahal. They all had handwriting you couldn’t read. And they always injected you. With chloroquine. Oh, chloroquine was a bitch.
There was an implicit confidence in doctors. Our mothers never questioned a doctor’s prescription. They didn’t take us to see doctors with a diagnosis already in mind or a prescription already on their tongues. Doctors were kings and queens and it was a fine time to be a doctor back then. Of course Google ruined it, because now we are all doctors simply because we can click search. We can even watch videos of surgeries before we go for surgery. Google has turned us into specialists. We are pharmacists. Oncologists. Allergists. Orthopedists. Radiologists. Gastroenterologists. Gynecologists…wait, hang on.
Anyway, so based on my “Old-Doctor” socialisation I show up at this hospital for a second opinion and I’m told to wait for the peadi, so I sit and I wait. It’s a weekday afternoon. Kim is strapped on the back of the nanny, napping with his mouth agape. Tamms is standing before an oil painting. A choir of crying kids rises all around us. A guy with three chins is complaining aloud why it’s taking so freaking long to see a doctor while they are obviously not too busy. I want to tell him to save his breath and sit, you can’t bully these people with noise, they have seen the most cantankerous patients so your bickering is like a sound of gurgling spring water. Take your seat and wait, I have learnt. But if you have to stand and say something then say something measured and nice. Charm gets better results in hospitals.
I then saw the pediatrician walk out and my heart just sunk.
He looked like a boy. I swear. If you shaved a few years off his life, he would be the one waiting to see a pediatrician with adenoids. He had such a boyish face I thought, “Am I going to see a Rotaract-ian (is that how one refers to them?) or a doctor?”
I walked back to the main admission reception and told the lady seated behind the desk. “Hey, I don’t mean to be one of those annoying and difficult patients you hate but is that the Dr. X we are supposed to see?”
“Yes,” she smiled.
“I’m sorry, but how old is he?”
She laughed and said, “He’s old enough.”
“My God, he looks like a boy! I must be older than him!”
“How old are you?”
“38? And him?”
“Ok, he’s much younger than you.”
“How much younger? Is he any good? Because he’s our second opinion.”
“He’s good.”
“Would you tell me if he wasn’t?”
“I would” she laughed unconvincingly.
In my head I had convinced myself we were coming to see an ageing doctor. One of those doctors who speak in a slow drawl and look at you with half sleepy eyes and dress badly because they have such medical knowledge and experience that they have no time for the trivialities of fashion. I thought we would see a doctor who doesn’t know how to use a computer properly, and so when they type on the keyboard they spend two minutes looking for the letter “M”. I wasn’t ready for this much younger doctor. He looked like the kind who loves Justin Bieber. I always think that if a doctor knows what a mojito is then he’s too young. I was pretty sure this doctor knew what a mojito was. I don’t think Professor Ogola – the brilliant cardiologist – knows what a mojito is. If he’s heard of a mojito, he probably thinks it’s a small town of 400 people in rural Cuba.
But then I thought to myself that this young guy could be a genius doctor, top of his class, some sort of medical prodigy. Sharp like a sabre. Surely, he wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t good. I propped my confidence in him on a wobbly pole.
Genius or not, when we later walked in I found that although he obviously knew his shit his people skills was close to zero. And he was terrible with the boy. With me he had zero eye contact, which was fine because perhaps he doesn’t believe in looking at men in the eye, but he didn’t engage the boy at all. There are doctors who will be blowing balloons and drawing a smiley face while calling the child by name and touching their shoes and saying, “Give me these shoes!” in that voice that only doctors and nurses seem to be able to master, even before examining him.
And the child is saying, “Nooo!” and they are saying, “Noo, please give me these shoes, I love them! Please,” and the child is slapping their hands away, giggling, and they insist and say, “Come on, let me borrow them for today, I have a party, I will return them tomorrow,” and they’re laughing and saying, “You are too big! They can’t fit!” and he/she pretends to sulk and he/she says, “Come on, they will fit me, here, have mine.“ And before the child realizes it, the doctor has looked at the child’s ears, throat, and listened to their chest.
And we – the parents – think our kids are more special than other kids. We are obnoxious and obviously annoying. Our kids are always sicker than the next kid. And so when you make our children laugh and giggle, when you try to steal our children’s shoes from their feet, you invariably get in our good books even if we waited for five hours to see you. And we never forget you. You could fumble with the medication or even the actual diagnosis, but we will be kinder to you because you were warm and amiable and you didn’t remove your shoes. And we will never forget your name.
After seeing the boy-doctor, I called my pal and said, “That guy was as warm as an alligator and not a day older than the Iphone 6.”
“But he’s really good!” she laughed.
“Yes,” I said, “So is a corkscrew!”
“Maybe he was having a bad day!”
“Doctors shouldn’t have bad days! They are doctors..gods!”
Sometimes feeling better is all in the mind. Sometimes you go see a doctor and just by seeing him, just by being in his space, you feel better. Some have that thing about them that inspires good health. There are scores of young brilliant doctors I have seen who have it. Those who have something more than just the smarts. Something extra. Something humane and otherworldly. They have that healing hand. They feel your forehead and you suddenly don’t feel like throwing up. They talk to you and they talk to what ails you. You feel safe and healed in their presence. It’s something that some doctors have and others don’t.
I always wonder if doctors training to be pediatricians are examined on how they relate with babies. Because some treat babies like bluetooth external speakers. Wireless things that emit sound remotely. They are awkward around babies. When a baby cries they don’t have the first clue on what to do. In fact they look like they want to cry too.
Dear Pediatricians, we don’t want you to wear clown shoes or a red rubber nose. We don’t want you to do a dance or wear a Scottish kilt. We don’t want you to grow a beard or look intellectually haggard. We don’t even want you to sing to our babies.
All we want is for you to try. Try act like the baby is not a gadget with a manual. You might dislike us annoying parents, brandishing Google in your face, your relationship might be ending, you might be in debt, you might not have been paid your Locum fees for that month and you are pissed, but when we place our child in your chair, just try and be a baby like them. Just be a baby.