Toxin

The doc looked at me as if to ascertain whether I was an animal.  I had told him my complaint: intermittent fever. The fever plays hide and seek with me.  I wake up in the middle of my sleep feeling the body burning all over.  All sorts of pain shoot through some parts of the body as if to give company to the temperature.  It keeps me turning in bed this way and that for about an hour and then my nightdress is all drenched with perspiration.  Voila! Both the fever and the shooting pains have vanished.

"How many times did this happen?" the doc asked.

"Four," I said. "Maybe five."

"When did it start?"

"About two weeks ago," I said.

It's then he stared at me.  I understood the meaning of his stare.  So I consoled him, "It's nothing, doctor. Once I got up and changed the drenched night dress, I was back to normal."

"Then why did you come today?"

"Last night my night dress remained dry and the fever continued well into the morning."

"And now?"

"Now I'm feeling quite fine."

"You still have fever, man," he said.  "I can see it in your eyes.  Check his temperature," he told the nurse.

"One-naught-two," the nurse said having pulled out the thermometer from under my armpit.

"And he's saying he is fine!"  The doc told the nurse who continued to remain as formally nonchalant as from the beginning. I liked that nonchalance though I don't know why.  Usually I like smiling faces.  I guess I was in no mood for smiles this morning.  Yet I smiled at the doc.  In fact, I gave him one of my best smiles.  How could I explain to him that pain has been an integral part of my psyche for the last twenty years or so?  So much so that a fever won’t unsettle me.  Not even the accompanying shots of pain.  I certainly didn’t want to shock him by saying that over the course of time people get used to discomforts.  He might regard me as an enemy of medical science.

He ordered an injection and a couple of blood tests.

“There’s too much toxin in your blood,” the doc said looking at the results of the blood tests.  I think he said that my WBC count was 18,000.  “How much should it be?” I asked looking dumb.  “8000,” he said.

He suggested I be admitted and go through a series of injections.  “Can medicines do the job?”  I hate lying on a hospital bed.

I think he liked my spirit.  He allowed me to spend the Sunday and the Onam Monday at home swallowing the pills.  “Come on Tuesday,” he said.  I liked that. 

As I sat in the car with my brother who drove me home, I wondered why it took so many years for toxin to penetrate my veins.  I guess that’s one of life’s mysteries.