Physician Heal thself?

Ever heard the phrase? ‘Physicians heal thyself’ my tale below would tell you when that cliché became a part of my life. I am a very junior doctor having graduated just two years and a few months ago, I’m presently just one month and two weeks post my National Youth Service Programme. The story I am about to tell goes back to the year I was an intern.

I was the only house man in the department of medicine and since we were short staffed the medicine unit also covered the emergency room. I was also in charge of all the wards, the male ward which had a special unit where those with full blown AIDS and all the illnesses that go with it were cared for, the female ward with a similar sub unit but fewer patients and the Private ward where those who could afford it were. I felt those months were the most hectic of my short career as a house man.

A doctor is usually quite good at studying folks and giving a differential diagnosis even when the object of their diagnostic skill is not a patient. For example the newscaster with a slight squint is noticed by the doctor when nobody else does! So isn’t it surprising when a doctor comes down sick and doesn’t even recognize the signs?

I had been at my less than best physical state for several weeks working very hard and living on indomie noodles and bread. I put it down to bouts of malaria which did not respond to any antimalarial I took. I even went as far as taking Quinine which I promptly discarded after the first dose when I lost a night’s worth of good sleep listening to my heart beat ever so loudly and my ears ringing as if my cochlea’s had been converted to church bells.

For several days in a row my registrar had first of all frowned at me then given me a stern warning that my lateness to ward rounds would no longer be tolerated. I could not tell him that for weeks now I had been barely able to drag myself out of bed talk less of waking up early to go about my work which had now been converted from a joy to an endless tiring chore.

My nights were an oppression I usually woke up at night drenched in sweat, with a fever burning my skin. The days were not better, even if the rooms were flooded with sunlight I could not ever seem to keep warm, I could no longer consult with the air conditioners on, and I always begged to have them switched off. Several eyebrows were raised but no one bothered to ask me what the matter was. I was miserable.

The turning point came one day about three days after I had started coughing, my sister called me in the afternoon and I had answered the phone breathless and barely able to construct sentences because of a cough and sharp right sided pain in my chest. She very promptly closed the conversation and made an SOS call to my dad who called me that evening.

I was on call in the emergency room burning with a fever as usual but still plodding on, I had come to accept the fever as normal and was going on with my life. His sharp inquiries to my state of health saw me giving a summary of my physical signs and symptoms which so far I had continued inaccurately to sum up as malaria. I was given a stern order to go and see a consultant that night and given an ultimatum to have something done about my state of health or else……………..

You can guess what happened I landed in hospital that night, my so called ‘normal’ temperature was 40*C!, all sorts of lab tests done and of course the correct diagnosis was made. (Medical personnel reading this should be able to tell what I had without any further clues or at least give differentials!). I spent at least three days on admission and a further two months trying to build up my reserves which had seriously been depleted weight wise (one more clue!).
You can bet that after my experience my resolve to become a better diagnostician was heightened especially with respect to myself!