I often wonder what happens when we go to a doctor with a complaint. In my 75 years of blessed existence, I have visited an ophthalmologist—or eye doctor, or whatever one chooses to call them—around 750 times. In the early '50s and '60s, and perhaps even later, a nurse would apply drops to both eyes and repeat the process twice at intervals. With your chin up and your face staring at the ceiling, neck strained, you had to remain in that most uncomfortable position for an hour or so.

Once you were in, oh, what a relief! The doctor, with a sort of penlight torch, would keep staring at various parts of your eye's innards, moving in all directions, with his face almost at kissing distance. Hopefully, he had no bad breath. The patient had to keep staring straight ahead, if that was even possible, like a nincompoop. Then, your tiny nose would have to bear the weight of a heavy frame on which different glasses would be placed, adding more weight. Some glasses would be tilted this way and that, and during this ordeal, the doctor would keep asking, "Was the earlier one better than this?"

"Doctor, aren’t you supposed to assess?" the mind would silently cry out. At last, some glasses would be prescribed, which, in my case, were so heavy that I could hardly walk. So, with a strained neck, hurting eyes, and a sore nose, I would walk out.

This process improved marginally in later years when the time required for dilating the eyes was substantially reduced. But how could the patient be spared? They came out with a wonderful, bigger magnifying lens with a bright light that could almost make you blind. Didn’t I go to the doctor to improve my vision? There are so many other instruments to check your eye pressure, look at the retina, and so on, during which you are not allowed to blink. Then you start thinking, "Should I just manage with whatever vision God has bestowed upon me?"

And don't even talk about dentists. The patient goes with a severe toothache. They will be made to open their mouth so wide that even cracks can be heard in the jaw. And with a heavy hammer-like tool, the dentist will tap on all the teeth, asking which one hurts. By the end of it, the entire range of teeth will start aching and paining. And the patient had gone in for relief.

Earache? The ENT physician will pull the patient's earlobe to the maximum stretchable limit and, with a torch, put his face inside. Then, with the longest probe, he will search for the treasure inside. Finally, with a Holi-sized syringe, he will blast water to take out a milligram of wax. And the pain, which began in the ear, would have spread to the eyes, head, cheeks, and wherever else it could. And I had gone in for pain relief.

Recently, I took my wife to an orthopedic surgeon for pain in her ankle. He twisted it at so many odd angles that she was in pain for over a week. With great difficulty, I managed to take her back to the doctor again for treatment.

So much for pain relief.

So, does one still go to the doctor to relieve pain or to re-live pain?

To be continued... 6. Still pics of the inners of a living body