SHOOTING IN THE DARK

Mar 14, 2011 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

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“We ladies go see the gynaecologist. The doctor who knows us inside out, so to speak. No matter what you guys think, it’s no fun being poked, prodded, and pinched by a doctor or nurse plus a ‘witness’ while you shiver under a paper smock on a cold steel table.
“ The metal contraptions they use are enough to give you nightmares… This is all to the good of our overall health, so we do it.”  This comes from the website Miss Cellenia and deals with the importance of gynaecologists to women’s health.   What Miss Cellina did not know is that in Trinidad among the “metal contraptions” favoured by at least one specialist, is a gun.
According to the conventional wisdom and “doctor” jokes, gynaecologists can also excel at other professions including using tools not normally associated with their stock-in-trade.  For example, there was a gynaecologist who had several high-performance and costly vintage cars and who thought it would be a good idea to expand his skills in the field of car maintenance so that he could at least repair his own vehicles.
He enrolled in the local technical college to be trained as a mechanic. After completing the course, everyone had to take a practical exam.  When the exam results were posted, the other students were very upset to see that the gynaecologist had scored 150 percent on the practical exam.  They complained to the institution’s Principal who called in the examiner to explain why he gave the gynaecologist such an outrageous mark.
The examiner explained, “Well sir, I did not know what else I could have given him. This is the first time I have ever seen anyone do a complete engine overhaul through the exhaust.”
There is also the story of the gynaecologist who fell victim to the recent financial meltdown and who had to seek employment through the government agency.  One day, a contractor found himself short of help and went to the unemployment office to hire someone for the day.   When he arrived, there were no painters available, but they did have a gynaecologist.
The contractor reluctantly took along the gynaecologist.  A few weeks later, the contractor returned to the unemployment office needing temporary help again. This time there were two painters, but instead he asked for the gynaecologist again.
The clerk asked, “Why do you want a gynaecologist when we have two professional painters you can take right now?”  He said, “Two weeks ago when I hired the gynaecologist, we arrived at the house and it was locked with nobody home. But I’ll be damned if that gynaecologist didn’t stick his hand through the mail slot and paint the whole house!”
Those stories demonstrate the grudging respect and envy other men have for gynaecologists.  It is not accidental that in all the jokes about them, gynaecologists are male.  The Trinidad situation also involves male gynaecologists.  The instrument in question, weapon really, is  a gun.  A local TNT newspaper reported, “AFTER a seven-year court battle in which he denied making a threatening telephone call, a consultant gynaecologist was found guilty and apologised in court to his fellow gynaecologist for threatening to kill him.
Magistrate Alexander Prince in the San Fernando Magistrates’ court on February 25, found Dr Krishna Rampersadsingh guilty of telephoning the home of Dr Jehan Ali in Palmiste and threatening to kill him. Ali was at the time, Head of the Obstetrics and Gynaecology department at San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH) and Rampersadsingh who worked under him, telephoned his home close to midnight on August 29, 2004 and shouted, ‘I will kill your…’”
I am not sure what oath Dr. Rampersadsingh swore; that was deleted in the text of the newspaper.  Clearly, it could not have been the Hippocratic Oath, named after the celebrated Greek physician, which doctors swear to uphold.  If, as one of my friends believes, the deleted expletive alludes to the anatomical area in which gynaecologists practice their profession, then the doctor who made the threat would be in familiar territory.
There are two extremely interesting sidelights to this issue.  The first is that if you ever want a doctor in Trinidad (or the entire Caribbean, in fact) to testify against another doctor in a malpractice suit, it will never happen but it is clear that doctors have no problems in taking their own colleagues to court especially if they consider themselves victims.
I once had a broken collarbone and a doctor performed surgery on me that, in the opinion of another orthopaedic surgeon, was totally unnecessary and was (he believed) the result of greed and/or because his colleague liked to “operate on people”.  Would he testify to that in court?  No way.
“It won’t do you any harm,” he said with a laugh, “and they did the same operation on Jeff Thompson (the Australian fast bowler).”   The second is the matter of professional ethics and the role of Medical Councils which are supposed to regulate the profession and have, as part of their mandates, the enforcement of professional conduct, and Medical Associations which are expected to maintain the honour and interest of the medical profession.
Is the medical profession and “honour” compatible?  Is the term “ethical doctor” an oxymoron?  A seven-year old girl told her mom, “A boy in my class asked me to play doctor.”  The mother was aghast.  “Oh, dear,” the mother nervously sighed. “What happened, honey?”  “Nothing,” the little girl replied.  “He made me wait 45 minutes and then double-billed the insurance company.”
In another story, a woman was in her doctor`s  office and suddenly shouted out, “Doctor, kiss me!”  The Doctor looked at her and remarked, “It`s against the Code of Ethics to kiss you.”  A few minutes later the woman again shouted out “Doctor, please, kiss me just once!”
Again he refused, apologetically, and said, “As a doctor I simply cannot kiss you.  It violates my code of professional conduct.”  Soon after, she pleaded again, “Doctor, Doctor, please kiss me just once!”  The doctor replied, “Look.  I am sorry but I just cannot kiss you.  In fact, I probably shouldn’t even be making love to you.”
*  Tony Deyal was last seen saying that Hippocrates insisted those who practice medicine should “be esteemed physicians not only in name but in reality”?  Obviously the Hippocratic Oath has given way to the Hypocritical Oath.

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