A Trip to the Doctors

I might have been inflicted with insomnia, ADHD and OCD, but fortunately i have generally been blessed with good health. Just as well, as i have always hated going to the doctors.

However, for the third time in my 17 month stay in The Ganj, i head up to the Men Tsee Khang Tibetan Clinic in the village. Situated about 300 metres up the Dharamkot Road, the clinic is basic, but clean and bright. I pick up a wooden tag number for my doctor, Tsering Tsomo, and fortunately only have to wait for about five minutes. There are two other doctors at the clinic.

Dr. Tsering is about 45 years old, attractive, attentive, caring, concerned and compassionate. She asks my symptoms as she takes the multitude of pulses from both my arms. Plenty of “oh dear´s” and “poor you´s”

She completes the consultation in about 10 minutes. She diagnoses an infection, and recommends avoiding salads, chillies and cold drinks. Fortunately, coffee is given the go ahead. She prescribes me seven different medicines which are to be taken across the course of the day for a period of one week.

I pay the cashier in the corner (my prescription and consultation costs me RS160 – about US$4) and then collect the herbal remedies from the on-site pharmacist. They are all perfectly charming; so warm and friendly. It all makes for a very pleasurable experience.

As always, the medicine tastes completely rank (many of the pills need to be chewed), but has always been 100% effective in the past. I take the first two lots of medication and begin to feel better already, until my Mum calls me from the UK. She reminds me that both my maternal grandmother and my great-grandmother died of septicaemia, and believes i am about to keel over at any moment.

Ma spends twenty angry minutes trying to persuade me to “return to civilisation”. Her words, unsurprisingly, are ineffectual, but of course it does hurt to hear her distress, and nothing i can say reassures her.