I was in final year MBBS those days. Once I was sitting in ward with my fellows. Suddenly we got a very pungent smell. We looked out to find where is it coming from. We saw a person going in the gallery with his face covered. We looked around but couldn’t find any source of smell. Then one of our colleague who came from outside told us that the man going in the gallery was a patient of Oral Cancer, he came here for dressing and the smell was coming from him.
A year later, during our House Job we again saw that patient and got to know more about him. He was 52 years old, and developed mouth cancer involving right side of tongue, right cheek and spreading up till his ear. And tongue cancers smell so pretty bad.
He was sitting in the dressing room. We all were standing outside looking at each other as to who will go and do dressing. Finally we decided to do it because who else will. We tried to console him and asked for his attendant, as we needed to explain certain things. Initially he didn’t utter a word but then he said that:
“My mouth smells so bad that my family couldn’t bear the smell and my son has thrown me out of the house. People say that I smell like a dead dog. I live in an isolated room in the fields and my family send me food there. I know I smell bad that’s why I use to hide my face all the time. I never go anywhere and come only to hospital for treatment. Whenever I enter ward, patients either shout at me to get out or sometimes they move out themselves. The only person who comes near me is the dressing doctor."
Suddenly he asked us a question which we didn’t expect from him, "Doctor, don’t you feel the smell?” For a second we didn’t know what to say, but then we said, "We do, but if we don’t do the dressing who else will?” He didn’t say a word thereafter.
After the dressing was done and we were about to leave, he wrapped his face, looked at us and said, “Doctor, I want to say something, if I have to do the dressing of some patient with similar condition as of mine, probably I would not have the strength to do so, thank you.”
It happened few years back, I don’t know what would have happened to him but then there must be some other young doctor doing his dressing now and it will continue to be so till the time Almighty give him breath to bear that. May Almighty save everyone from all kind of such diseases. Ameen.