Nerve Endings Firing Away

A hair follicle infection isn’t as cool as it sounds. Seemingly innocuous, it can almost give you a cult-like status in some cultures or simply appear gross in regular civilizations. I was the object of such an affliction over the past week and gave me boundless agony until I decided to reimburse my mandatory health insurance by a visit to the hallowed halls of the emergency room. Emergency rooms have been idolized in many a drama series on primetime television and I braced myself for the onrush of chaotic madness and even called a befuddled receptionist to ask if I should call ahead before coming in.

The environs of the hospital were calm and peaceful, no indication of screaming sirens or wailing patients in pain. The entrance itself was hidden and all my expectations of making a grand entrance vanished just like that. Ash accompanied me to hold my hand if screamed in pain although I assured her that “mard ko dard nahi hota”. She predictably laughed. But at that point of time, I was more concerned if the hospital accepted my insurance although the website did say so but I didn’t want to be screwed by some outdated website. The receptionist calmly assured me that since I was in the emergency room, they accept all insurance plans. Hmmmm; why would anyone go to a private doctor? Just hop over to the emergency room when in doubt. But I bet they have some laws for that because I wasn’t the first desi in an emergency room. Americans learn from their experiences.

Anyway, I digress. The receptionist asked me what exactly was wrong. Now I wasn’t sure, if I should be spilling out my guts but since she wouldn’t let me through until I had, I proudly announced that I had a weird boil on my chest. Mockingly she said, “A boil?” Hey, lady! You would be hopping mad if you had one half the size of this one but I resisted the urge to flash my chest. For your reference, I am not a willing exhibitionist; those stories you might have heard were freak accidents. I am still undergoing therapy for those (actually I am not, but it just sounds cool to say that I am). I cooled my heels for a while in an anteroom with an assortment of preliminary medical paraphernalia. A doctor-looking lady strutted out and demanded (yes, demanded) to see my boil. Meekly, I complied. She hmmm-ed and then did the routine blood pressure, pulse rate, and other thingies and then herded me to the mountain of paperwork.

Healthcare in America and paperwork are like Siamese twins, almost impossible to separate but not all that impossible either (Ash tells me that this metaphor doesn’t work; I am using it anyways). After literally signing a dozen forms, effectively relieving the hospital of any moral responsibility for leaving any surgical instruments in my interiors, I was tagged like an animal with my own personalized bar code. I just didn’t want to be scanned like a gallon of milk while checking out.

I watched Ash keeping herself busy with football updates and a bouncing baby in the waiting room; the entire city was elsewhere celebrating the Falcons win (they lost the next playoff game though). Next, I entered the ominous halls of the emergency room where the medical assistants introduced themselves. I was given my own scrub; bed with a crisp white sheet that the medical assistant (the one whom I mistook for a doctor earlier) said I could do whatever with it. Now I stood alone in the examining room holding the scrub pondering whether I was expected to drop my pants or just remove my shirt. Finally after some rational thinking, I agreed that since the boil was on my chest, I decided not to drop my pants (remember my earlier reference to being an unwilling exhibitionist; another freak incident would have been added to the list if I had thought otherwise). The ladies returned and made me lie on my back and demanded (again!) to see my boil, “Cool! Doesn’t that seem like an alien protrusion or a third nipple?” (I know; ewwww!)

Frankly, I wasn’t in any mood to joke around but never mess around with people who are eventually going to bust your “third nipple”. Earlier my anatomically and geographically clueless roommate had made a similar gaffe. But secretly I too thought it did seem like one. The doctor then made a grand entrance and we again went through a round of introductions. The doctor looked at it and also hmmmm-ed, “This looks like a third nipple”. His assistants giggled. I was all ready to storm out but instead smiled nervously.

He advanced with a pair of scissors and said, “Let me clip first”. I panicked but relaxed when I realized that he meant the hair around the third nip; errr; boil. Local anesthesia is one of the cruelest jokes on patient-kind. The doctors just pull out a largish needle, squirt some liquid for practice, and then calmly stick it royally into the infected boil. There is nothing painless about that. I squirm and keep mum; partly to keep the relationship of mard and dard intact otherwise I would have been responsible for driving out the other patients in the waiting room with my screams.

The ladies in white hold me down as the doctor mechanically goes about his business, occasionally chatting up with the ladies about his son’s grades and antics in school. Soon, he is done stuffing a ream of gauze into my now-busted boil and bandaging it with some more gauze. I gradually bring myself to look at the “battlefield” surprised to see that it isn’t as gory as I had imagined. The doctor leaves as quickly as he had arrived. The ladies give me some post-remedy advice and some gauze and a pair of scissors like some farewell present, neatly wrapped in a ziplock bag.

I join Ash in the waiting room and proudly narrate my exploits in the emergency room. She instead is grossed out by my over-the-top description of the busted third nipple. The lady in white hands me my prescription and some words of advice as we finally leave the hospital. The ordeal surprisingly didn’t take long and they didn’t scan my tagged bar code either.