Everyone on the telly gets rare, exotic diseases which doctors, who are a cross between Greek gods and medical encyclopaedia, diagnose immediately
Everyone on the telly gets rare, exotic diseases which doctors, who are a cross between Greek gods and medical encyclopaedia, diagnose immediately
Television medical dramas are guaranteed to have you feeling decently ill yourself. Just to meet one of those glamorous doctors, who run through corridors all through the episode, gowns and steths and shampoo-ad hair flapping, wafting from one crisis to the other. To have them look deep into your eyes, hold your wrist, place their palm on your chest – and tell you that you have onychocryptosisunguisincarnatus (an ingrown toenail), but who cares since they’re going to cure you by the end of the episode anyway.
And then you’re back to reality with a thud. The thud of course, is your medical bill, which never shows its sneaky face on screen.
Everyone on TV gets rare, exotic diseases which doctors who are a cross between Greek gods and medical encyclopaedia diagnose immediately. In reality, you go in with a rash you can’t reach. The TV patients have life-crushing sob stories to match. Your spouse is glued to your bedside too – but that’s because the TV has the tennis semis on. He sheds copious tears, but that’s from flaring allergies to the flowers the spouse of the patient on the next bed has gifted her.
As for TV surgeries, you know each step so well, you’re qualified to perform one yourself. They rarely vary, no matter what gets pulled out – goitre, tumour or baby. The surgeon holds out his hand and says, ‘Scalpel’. The ECG machine flatlines. Every light flickers, every monitor beeps, the music goes into crescendo, the team goes into Code (whichever colour signals the highest alarm). And then – when you’ve held your breath to bursting point – the patient’s eyes flip open. Another successful episode! The TV team has saved the day and you’ve saved their ratings.
Having qualified yourself to the highest degree available in TV medical care, you switch to film. So much more time to first endanger a life and then save it. Someone who’s been pulped in a fistfight with five hoodlums, shot thrice, run over by a truck, then thrown off a roof lies in a hospital bed, saved solely by the blood, germs and lovesick glances from his lover on the next bed. Never has the half-butchered patient never recovered. Never have the blood groups never matched. Inspiration burning in your veins, you volunteer for the next blood donation drive. You’re sent back home with half a day’s leave and two cookies.
Forget those ‘It’s better in Goa’ T-shirts. Yours should read ‘It’s better on TV’.
Where Jane De Suza, the author of Happily Never After, talks about the week’s quirks, quacks and hacks
