My Toughest Patient Yet — DAD : Where X-ray Technician trumps "Daughter-Doctor¿" and Superstitions of Ashtami & Tuesday rule Lives at my Home.
Vomiting, retching, blood-streaked, stomach twisting,
and my first instinct wasn’t just medicine —
it was fear.
Not fear of losing him,
but fear of fighting his stubborn myths again.
It was ashtami that day.
So apparently, IV supplies could not be bought by my brother alone.
The tenant had to tag along —
because God cares about shopping rituals
more than blood pressure and bleeding.
They wouldn’t let me inject IV pantoprazole either.
Their “doctor daughter” might bring bad vibes,
as if my syringe carried curses instead of medicine.
So my father closed his eyes tight,
covered them with a towel,
asked my mother to “hold the injection first.”
For luck.
For vibes.
Then she handed it to me,
like passing down holy fire —
and I, after 8 years of medical slogging,
finally gave my first injection to my own father
under the shadow of suspicion.
The irony cut deeper because just months before
I was the patient.
Twenty-one episodes of diarrhoea.
Seventeen in one night.
Weak, feverish, tachycardic,
almost dry as parchment.
But hospital admission? Denied.
Because it was Tuesday.
Because Tuesday is “inauspicious.”
Apparently, dehydration listens to the calendar.
I begged, desperate,
and in my collapsing state I agreed to let
the radiology technician cannulate me.
Yes, he got the cannula in.
Yes, he connected the fluid.
And yes, he left for work,
leaving me, the doctor-patient,
to monitor myself.
So when I dragged myself to the washroom,
my father helped disconnect the fluids,
and I, half-conscious, failed to occlude the cannula.
Blood poured out —
on my bed, my palms, on my father.
Scarlet trauma.
I didn’t scream then,
but later it screamed inside me —
in sleepless nights, therapy sessions,
a week of lost rhythms.
Fast forward — my father’s veins collapsed,
his BP low, his diabetes and hypertension
demanding delicate balance.
The same technician who cannulated me
tried him — three failed pricks.
And no one said a word.
Because he is trusted.
And I am “just their daughter.”
Thank God I didn’t attempt first —
one failure, and I would have been slaughtered with blame.
Finally, our neighbour, a nursing officer,
found a blue cannula for him —
smaller bore, but enough.
Through that fragile line I pushed ondansetron,
hooked fluids,
monitored like a resident on call.
Hourly checks.
Adjusting antihypertensives.
Titrating diabetic meds.
Reading his fragile heartbeats like a book.
And then — my intuition struck.
Check his sugar.
It was 40.
Forty.
The kind of number that flips your stomach.
So I gave him jaggery, connected DNS,
trying to lift him up,
while my mother in stubborn defiance
slipped him curd rice behind my back —
breaking the NPO I ordered.
Because in this house, rituals
always stand taller than science.
Slowly, he recovered.
Not by ashtami.
Not by Tuesday myths.
But because I refused to give up —
on my father,
on my training,
on myself.
And yet the ache remains.
Not the diarrhoea,
not the hypoglycemia,
not even the blood that once soaked my palms.
But the fact that my own parents
still can’t see me as a doctor.
Still see the eight-year-old child
and not the woman who fought
life and death twice in three months.
Yes, my father healed.
Yes, they began to trust me — a little.
But I don’t fool myself:
one crisis doesn’t erase blind beliefs.
One injection doesn’t undo years of superstition.
And so I stand here —
angry, scarred, sarcastic,
but unbroken —
a doctor who had to fight
not just diseases,
but her own family,
to prove she is not a child anymore.
And Debunk the Myths of Telugu Culture
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