Doctors receiving flak

I don’t believe doctors are bad, i just think doctors are victims of their own foolishness. Why their profession receives flak these days where as earlier they were revered as gods is because doctors have resigned their contemplative minds to the crazy- busy- demanding lifestyle of their profession.

Today, a doctor believes in the medical representative more than his own father. When there is a toothache, a newer, stronger painkiller may sound more feasible than a pithy piece of clove which an old parent suggests mainly because we are in a result driven society. And pain hinders our movements and compromises our day to day living for a while. So the patients feed this demand fopr a quick-fix remedy.Pain is an unwanted side-effect of our living. Yet, in truth, Gautama Buddha said, life is suffering.

Who do we then believe—a saint or the friendly neighbourhood doctor?

By avoiding any sort of suffering are we evolving into a species with zero tolerance?

Somehow it  seems, at least superficially, that man is devising his own method of destruction. Lifestyle diseases are cases in point. By nurturing and encouraging a result oriented lifestyle man is making himself an instrument that works against his own body system. There are, at present, more people in society who are sick in mind, body and spirit than there ever was or may be we are just more aware and the number of new diseases  have gone up, enabling us to label every litlle change from the normal to be called a disease, Nowadays, it is difficult to define normalcy anymore.

We joke lightly that we should not go in for medical tests without reason because something or the other will emerge altered AND THEREFORE A REASON FOR CONCERN. Actually, it may be true—it could be nothing but a fact. And not just doctors, even the fitness brigade , religious gurus and counsellors cash in on this insecurity of human mind which is a fear of death basically.

Dont blame the doctors, blame yourself for believing in a myth propagated by scientists, pharmacy companies, health and beauty magazine journalists and by ignorant fools rampant in the society. If we can , for a while , step out of the rat-race and look at how like an over-run  machine we are undergoing wear and tear, we would parhaps take a deep breather and redefine our lifestyle to a more slow paced, contemplative, easy going living that would be skeptic about every call of emergency. There is no need to panic at all, instead there is a BIG need to relax.

The day we learn to embrace our sufferings, we will be shown a way to a better lifestyle that keeps diseases at bay. Until then we are bound to suffer in our short-sighted effort to allievate sufferings. Being a qualified doctor myself I put the onus of encouraging such fortitude in a human mind on the doctor community. The rest can and should pitch in in their own little ways.

BTW, recently I met two doctors on two different occasions who reaffirmed my faith in the belief that change is happening.  One who advised NO antibiotics for my son’s upset stomach  and another, a dentist who advised NO painkillers for my daughter’s toothache. Both addressed the root cause and lo! We sailed through both incidents without much ado.