The Gentle Doctor

We entered the old building and glanced at the narrow elevator.

“Which floor is it?” I asked my mother.

“First.”

“Great, let’s take the stairs.”

The stairs in question were dingy, the walls around in desperate need of painting. Flashbacks of a similar trip in another city: dimly lit stairs, a sick dog’s vomit at the base, climbing upto an office that was kindling for a fire with no windows and a garish wall paper, a few people, suffocation wrapped up in a ribbon, came trundling down the memory tunnel. We had been visiting a therapist for my panic attacks. Mom and sister were the ones who’d found this therapist on some app. I’d begged mom to leave then and pretty much figured out some ways to deal with anxiety on my own. We joked about how that therapist had ‘cured’ me.

“The stairs are dingy,” I said with dread, “I’ll bet there’s a suffocating office at the end of them.”

Mom didn’t say anything probably wondering if her booking this appointment was to end in a similar fate as that time. We continued past the false floor onto the floor where there were two glass doors side by side. One door’s signage told us that it was our destination. Inside, there was light and space, a doorman checked our temperature and told us to take the stairs leading further up. We ended up in the reception of an office, light and airy. A shot in the arm. The receptionist informed the doctor that we’d arrived and in a minute or two she sent for us.

I steeled myself for yet another medical practitioner telling me off about my weight and ordering me to make lifestyle changes as though I was willingly being irresponsible and subversive.

“If she starts talking about my weight, I swear to God,” I had warned mom.

“She will have to,” mom said exasperated, “If it’s there it’s there.”

“Yes, but doctors are always judgementally myopic about weight, which is just a risk factor and not always the primary cause of some issues. It makes them blame everything on weight and not do the investigation properly.”

One would think my mother would understand this well considering her own cholesterol levels were high even though she was not only fit, but also eating healthy and staying active. But no dice. Fatphobia runs deep in my mother’s veins, as most of the world’s. Fat people could die in an accident or be shot, and people will blame it on their BMI.

Inside was another spacious office, to the right of which was a huge frosted glass window that scattered light into the room. The doctor was wearing a mask but she had large, pretty eyes above it and her hair were up in a messy clutch grasp. She confirmed my name in a bright, confident voice and told me to sit on the round top chair next to her. Mom sat on a sofa built collateral to the wall facing the doctor.

“So tell me,” she said.

“Actually, we’ve gotten some tests done,” I hesitated. “We wanted to show you and get your opinion on them. But, the reason for this visit right now is because of what happened a couple of days ago. We’d gone to Manali and when we came back I had an issue…I felt weak, there was a tingling sensation in my palms and, and we went to the doctor and he said it was exhaustion…”

Again, a slight pause to bolster myself, “I have anxiety and I have had a panic attack, but usually they’re always associated with breathing. This was presenting itself as tingling in my limbs and a crushing weakness. I mean sleep and food cycles were disrupted during the travel and I was anxious about driving in the hills a lot. So we figured we’d come and talk to you. I’m sure you get this a lot, but I don’t want to ideally take any medicines for anxiety.”

“Everyone says that,” she said, “No one wants the medicine. We shall only do sweet talk.”

I smiled a little coldly I suppose because she sensed a shift and brushed past it.

“So this tingling stopped then?”

“Yes, once I slept,” I said. “Would you like to see the reports?”

“No,” she said, “Not yet. That is fifteen percent of my job. Most of my job is with you, my patient.”

She asked me a few more questions about my anxiety and my work etc. Mom and I also discussed the blood pressure and heart rate that had gone up at that time.

“That’s to be expected, it’s the fight or flight mode,” she said and brought out her own blood pressure machine and set it upon her desk.

“It’s normal,” she said after the reading was done.

She then asked for the reports and went through them.

“Your tests are normal, this is fine, don’t even bother about this, nothing here.”

“Wait,” Mom and I exchanged looks, “Even the uric acid?”

“There is no issue here unless you have gout,” she said. “Avoid red meats but in general avoid those anyway.”

We were stunned because other doctors had made a big deal about this.

“This is not serious,” she repeated, “Don’t worry about it.”

She then flipped to the page with my cholesterol report and said, “Now this, this is your body telling you something. This is borderline.”

She then proceeded to ask my mom if the family had history of cholesterol. We did.

“Right,” she said, “See, I’m sure you’re making the lifestyle changes, and you have the opportunity to reverse this. You have to run, I mean metaphorically, to put distance between you and your family’s medical history. And there is no reason it should catch up to you even till seventy. Without any judgement, we can figure how to do this.”

I was stunned because no one had ever said ‘without any judgement’ and actually acted it, especially doctors, to me or to my sister. Ever.

“As for your anxiety, I don’t think you need to go on medication. You are managing it well, you’re aware of it. If down the line you feel like you need medication we can discuss that or if you need something as an sos, I can prescribe that too.”

“I think,” I glanced at mom, “an sos pill would be great, not just to actually take it but even to have it with me would ease my mind.”

She nodded and told me the name of the pill.

“It’s an MD pill, mouth dissolving because you may or may not have water around at the time so it’ll dissolve. And let me tell you, because although I suggest don’t google, but you will,” both of us laughed, “So yes, it is benzodiazapene, it does have addictive properties but taken as an sos pill it is alright and won’t cause issues and it is the best available solution for this.”

“Wow, you basically answered all of my questions for it,” I said. She shrugged with a smile.

“Let’s check your BMI,” she suggested, turning to her laptop screen.

“I know it’s above the right amount,” I said, unwilling to really go down this route.

“There’s no harm in seeing the numbers,” she said assuringly. “Luckily for you, you’re tall so the weight distributes well that way. Let’s just see where we are at right now.”

Reluctantly I told her my numbers and she fed it in. The chart was like a speedometer and mine was in the red zone at the start.

“Right,” she said, “So let’s try to get this to the yellow zone, let’s keep realistic goals.”

She fed in a number and told me that this would help.

I nodded, realising that I’d nearly reached that number last time.

“Do you think I need to get some tests done to see if I have some issues?” I said.

“No,” she was vehement about it.

“But like if I have mental disorder or…?” I was thinking bipolar or depression.

“No, you already know you have anxiety, there’s no need to test such stuff out and no test as such is accurate,” she said.

“See,” I hesitated because this was the first time I was verbalising something that moved like a deep current within me. Something that manifested itself as a symptom that caused my mother to often call me ‘greedy’, ‘weak-willed’ and ‘indisciplined’. “I don’t think my…I think I have an eating disorder. I binge eat. I eat when I’m unhappy…” I couldn’t bring myself to say more. Apparently my courage extended only to the edge of those words.

“I know,” she said, nodding her head, in a voice that was achingly gentle, “This is seldom a physical issue and there are factors…”

I swear to God I did not hear a word she said for the next few sentences. I stuck my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I imagined boobs. But I had to look at her face, her eyes mellow, compassionate and all the effort I was taking to stop my eyes from smarting went in vain.

I burst into tears. In the doctor’s office.

“It’s okay, it’s okay to cry,” she said as I spluttered apologies. She handed me a tissue. “You’re fine, you’re good. There is nothing to worry about, you have your age, your sex on your side, there is nothing that will hold you back.”

I removed my mask and used the tissue and apologised again. Mom told me not to apologise, her own eyes wet.

I heard the doctor out then and she reiterated that with counselling along with some lifestyle changes things would absolutely be better for me. I nodded, believing her.

I am grateful to mom because no matter how harsh she is, unwittingly, like a bull in a china shop, like the people around her were to her, she was the one who took the initiative to find this doctor and to take me there. She could see that I was suffering even through the usual day and decided to act on it because that’s the only way she knew how to care for me.

But that doctor, I’ll never forget her. I intend to see her again of course, but even if for some unfathomable reason I don’t, there is no way that I will ever be able to let go of this encounter where a doctor treated me with compassion instead of scolding me for my flaws.