WHEN MY body started showing signs of chicken pox, I rushed to my doctor. I told him, “Doctor, I have symptoms of chicken pox.” He confirmed the case and prescribed a five days’ course. He assured me that I would be relieved of this within this time, and if it persists, continue this course for a couple of days.
I was really anxious to find myself free from a dreadful disease. Naturally, out of my anxiety, I asked some of my friends and relatives about the precautions to be taken while undergoing treatment. After all, fear of ill health is the worst of all fears, not the fear of death as most of us think.
The real shock came as follows:
“Quarantine yourself first.” “Do not let your wife or anyone get close to you. It is so contagious that you both would be bedridden simultaneously.” And when it comes to food intake, “Take only cold and chilled food, and take plenty of water. Avoid hot and spicy food and it is better to be taking food fewer times than normal.” So goes the version.
A second consultation brought me real shocks.
“Don’t touch water.” Doctors and medical literatures would say, “Take bath, eat whatever you want and so on. It is your problem. Beware of your eyes. You will get boils inside your eyes. So if possible roast a few onion ears and get its juice and drip it in your eyes two three times a day. (Squeezing onion juice into my eyes two three times a day!). And never touch the boils or try to break them. It would spread all over your body if its puss gets in contact with other parts of the body. Don’t scratch when it gives you itching, rather you do one thing, get some leaves of Neem tree and gently fan with it over your boils. Don’t think of water and taking bath for the next fifteen days.”
A third opinion was really astonishing.
“You sleep on Neem leaves. Keep your room filled with fumes of some incense and a mix of some ayurvedic properties, which are known for killing invisible viruses. Do not open the windows, and you may go through a strict diet regime,” it sounded really unbelievable to me. “Take tender coconuts, as many possible, keep your eyes cool with drips of tender coconut water. Don’t take rice or anything solid, rather go for complete fruits like water melon, plantain, grapes, oranges, apples, pine apples, why list out, whatever you find in the fruit stall, eat them regularly. No salt, nothing hot, no coconut, nor its oil.”
Prescriptions and proscriptions alike followed. By this time, I had completed three days’ medicine and I started showing strong signs of recovery.
At the end, I consulted my mom, who has had the experience of treating more than ten patients in the traditional way. She herself had a providential escape from the grips of chicken pox in 1963, that too at a time when she had a lactating baby. She said fanning with leaves of Neem tree and sleeping on the same were fine. Fogging the room is also advisable. Taking a lot of fluid would work wonders. When it came to the contagious nature of the disease, my mom had a humble advice to my wife, “Don’t be scared, it is fear that makes people get affected.” Then she narrated how courageously she has handled some ten plus cases in her life. And lastly she said, “I have made an offering in a temple here, which is known for taking care of chicken pox patients.” I was wondering, in this day of specialisation, there are gods with specialisations too: chicken pox deity, small pox deity and there are gods for infertility cases too.
To cap it all, after the fifth day of the course and after having had enough symptoms to conclude that the virus attack is over, I started preparing for an elaborate bath; there came a warning from my mother-in–law, “No, don’t take bath on a Saturday. Saturdays are no good for taking bath after an illness.” She had no reason to substantiate it. All she did was that she described such baths as ‘tender baths’ or ‘premature baths’.
“Tender baths?” “Yes, it is called tender or premature baths; that is the bath you take before the actual bathing date. More than that, it is better to take bath on an uneven date like 11th day, 13th day, or 15th day and not on the 10th day, 12th day etc.” “How about the water?” “Water should be boiled and cooled and when boiling put plenty of Neem leaves and raw turmeric. If you could apply some raw turmeric paste on your body while bathing, it will give you faster recovery from the scars you otherwise may get on your face and surface.”
Medical science has improved a lot. A five days’ course was able to recover me completely from this dreaded disease. Apart from a few days’ body pain, fever and sleeplessness, I had had no serious problem going through this so-called difficult medical condition. I looked ugly for a couple of days; I had to advise my friends not to visit me during this period. Altogether, I was a sort of a little bedridden. I enjoyed enough appetite and thirst, and enough health.
What I found traumatic was not the disease but the scaring pieces of advice I have had from ‘reliable’ and ‘conventional’ sources. Unpleasantly, I found all my common sense and courage, education and intelligence, general well-being and energy going up in billows of smoke. I felt devastatingly insecure...
We have been married for four successful years, and we have never had to have separate beds for more than four days consecutively. This chicken pox is keeping our beds apart even now, after ten days.
My thirty plus office staff conveniently found me non-existing.
My wife has had to microscope all her body parts every other minute to see her share of chicken pox, as she had been attending to me 24/7.
The calls of concern I have had from different parts of my friends’ and relative’s worlds have all sounded so grave that I found myself in the brink of my own grave.
My sleeplessness was not caused by chicken pox. I am sure it is the traumatic experience I had in my surroundings that kept me awake.
The pre-chicken pox arrangements my post-expectant wife had to take included stocking the fridge with enough fruits, making arrangements with her duty days, up keeping the house and keeping all the dirty linen washed to keep me neatly dressed and to ensuring her coming sick days neat and tidy.
And finally, when my wife met my doctor and asked about his advice on taking bath, he said, “English medicine does not stop the patient from taking bath. One can take bath two times a day, but on one condition that you should not spoil the surface of the premature boils as it may leave permanent scars on your body. Besides this, taking bath is advised and people get faster recovery, as they do not scratch on their wounds due to itching. They get enough sleep and a healthy feel, thanks to these baths and the resultant hygiene and wellness.”
Now, I wonder what is the logic behind the condition that the patient should keep on eating and drinking only cool and chilled things and he/she is not advised to take bath for 15 days! Ridiculous, it sounded.
Out of my personal experience with this medical Pandora’s box, I can say that it is a wiser idea to take a course of English medicine, follow a moderate diet avoiding spicy and hot food and take bath with mild soap two times a day without spoiling the complete formation of the boils. Chicken pox was a dreadful contagion once when there were no medicines or definition for this disease. People were more ignorant and scared than today and they even believed that it was the play of some angry deities. They went on giving offerings and special prayers for the faster recovery and non-occurrence of the disease.
Unfortunately, even in these days of medical revolution, a simple enough medical condition like chicken pox is able to keep even highly educated of people in India at tender-hooks. No matter how developed you are, there are a few things you cannot live without. We call it traditional and indigenous beliefs handed down to our present generation. But in my personal opinion, a great number of these are utter superstitions. It is time we shed a great deal of them out of our psyche.
In medicine and treatment, today’s taboos are tomorrow’s tonics and tablets. Yesterdays’ proscriptions are today’s prescriptions and tomorrow’s what not! So, chicken pox is good. It would help us shed some superstitions.
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