Clueless about a cure

Khaleej Times (Issues) / 27 September 2013

SOME AILMENTS, like chewing gum stuck under your shoes, are hard to get rid of. Allergies, arthritis and migraines for instance. Regular in nature but less sinister in prospect, they are a nag than a pain and are the ones you don’t know what to do about.

You can’t ignore it, for it hinders your routine and throws normal life out of gear; you can’t cure it, because it either has no known cure or hasn’t been even diagnosed and tagged with a pronounceable name, nor can you bear in silence because it is anything but sufferable. All that you know is that there is a pesky disorder in your system that makes you walk vertical on the wall and run around in circles when your tolerance levels are breached. When I say run around in circles, I mean literally, between doctors and quacks, astrologers and time fixers, counselors and experts, and others (including strangers on the internet) who have had a similar condition and have somehow got it fixed.

 A friend of mine had been suffering from an all-pervading ache, so much so that she could tell the number of joints in her body at any point of time. After numerous visits to doctors of various specialties and endless rounds of medication, it turns out that she has ‘fibromyalgia’, from which there is no deliverance. Resigned to pain, at some point, she decided to shed a few pounds just to shape up and voila! The incurable got cured.

 Picture this. For months I have been suffering from a pain in the hand that has its origin somewhere in the shoulder and can’t seem to decide where to settle. I go to the orthopaedic, get some tests done and come home in a sling and some pills that would have killed me but for the insurance cover. I’m okay for some months and then the horrible condition kicks in again. Another ortho advises physical therapy apart from the wallet ripping prescription. I learn that my shoulder is frozen! The doc says I must have lifted a weight or suffered a fall. I don’t remember either. The physical therapist says it is age or diabetes. Neither of those, I aver.

 Meanwhile, the alternative medical practitioner to who I go for my migraine objects to the allopathic intervention in his holistic treatment. As per him, even external handling like the ultra sound, high frequency or gel on my shoulder can reverse the effects of his treatment. Now, I am left to decide what to tackle first — the migraine or the frozen shoulder. I choose the former and suffer the latter loudly, even as the homeo includes my shoulder in his notes.

 Friends back home have a new suggestion for thawing my shoulder — Ayurveda. I am tempted to pursue it while on vacation, but remembering my homeo doc’s warning against any interference, I desist. Meanwhile, the shoulder freezes to ice in the monsoons. I rush to an ortho in my home town, who puts me through tablets and physical therapy again. The physical therapist categorically says his is the only way to rectify things. Neither medicine nor mysticism can do it. I think of my homeo doc and waver, but put migraine on the back burner and go with the physio. I temporarily accept the opinion that alternative medicines are mere placebos. I choose to ignore my homeo doc’s contention that allopaths administer only steroids for migraine and if anything can cure my headache it is his little white pearls.

 Post physio, I return to homeo. Caught between multiple systems of medicine and healing, between hot and cold packs, I go by my instincts and put my body through rigorous tests of endurance and remedy, in the sole belief that something will work. Meanwhile, someone has suggested acupuncture and the occult to me.

 I am still gathering details; just in case all else fails.