My kudos to you, kudos to you, kudos to you … “
These are lyrics from a famous Malayalam movie. Crying has always been the duty and the prerogative of women . The burst into tears the moment they are touched by both sorrow or happiness. The never ending TV shows and Reality shows just thrive on the tears of our female population. Crocodiles and women are known to use tears as a weapon to survive. It is still a controversy whether the crocodile tears are to lure their victims, or that they cry for the preys they are eating, or whether the crocodiles really have a lachrymal gland or not. Whatever be the issue, crocodile tears have historically been compared to false feeling. However, Women shedding tears to escape a difficult situation is well known.
“O devil, devil!
If that the earth could teem with woman's tears,
Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.
Out of my sight!”
Shakespeare in Othello Act IV, scene 1
But have you ever seen a grown up man crying. It may be as rare as an eclipse but the most heart breaking and unappreciated event. How many times have we seen the media projecting a weeping man? It may be not be as heart breaking as a women’s tears, but when you try to understand that unlike women, men cry only when he is unable to control his grief we should appreciate his tears.
We had a 18 year old girl admitted in serious condition in our ward. She had some disease in her nasopharynx which was slowly killing her. She was accompanied by her mother and maternal uncle as her father had abandoned her. Her uncle was a healthy six foot Sardarji in his mid forties. His face never showed any signs of sorrow. He was always ready to get any investigation for her niece. She had been referred from many hospitals and by the time she came to us she had lost her consciousness. We had either a malignancy or an invasive fungal infection in our mind. But her radiology and biopsy were not giving any conclusive diagnosis. The disease had already taken her sight and now pushed her both eyeballs outside. The sight was horrible to watch even for the hardest heart .But day by day her condition worsened and we had nothing to offer her. We usually counsel the escorts of such patients to take them home and wait for the inevitable. This would at least decrease their financial burden and let the patient spend the rest of his or her life peacefully with relatives. As a prime institute, we are not allowed to dispose of any patient without giving them treatment, so these patients are classified as Discharged against medical advice or DAMA. They are not given any discharge booklet instead given a paper where details of the disease and treatment are written. While I was writing the DAMA certificate her uncle came to me and said to write the situation of the girl clearly. I got a bit annoyed partly because of the guilt that we could do nothing for the patient and partly because he was interrupting me. I told him that this paper would not help her in any way as she has already been rejected from most of the centres before coming here. Suddenly the uncle burst into tears telling me that that it was not for her further treatment, but just to show to the police official during their way home. He was afraid that seeing the pathetic state of the patients, they might suspect some foul play and stop them. I had no words to console him, but to hand over him the DAMA letter at the earliest.
A young man was admitted in our emergency following road traffic accident. He had lost vision of one eye due to a fracture which was pressing on to his optic nerve. Usually such injuries had poor prognosis as patients reached the centre much after the critical time in which surgery was possible. All we could do was to get the necessary radiological investigations and discharge the patient on steroids and wait of the vision to improve. We usually try to discharge patients from casualty as early as possible in order to reduce the load in causality. But getting a patient worked up in emergency is tricky. It requires great persuasion and effort from the part of the doctor and patient bystander to get them quickly. Usually what we do is to frighten the bystander by exaggerating the disease so that they show interest in getting the tests done. I had advised computed tomography for the patient in the morning and by evening I came to see the patient and they had not got the investigation done. I furiously told the father of the patient that if you deliberately delay the investigation the patient will lose his sight permanently and don’t blame us for that. I hastily left the casualty. But by the time I reached my duty room the father came behind me crying to save his son’s vision. I felt guilty as I knew that there is very less chance that the investigation would change his treatment and my only intent was to encourage the father of the patient to get the investigation done. I consoled the father and told him that we have already started the necessary treatment and it is the nature of the disease to improve only slowly.
A man in his twenties came to me last week at the outpatient department. He had an ulcer overt his tongue which was diagnosed to be cancer from an outside centre. I often think that seeing so much cancer patients almost daily, I fail to appreciate the gravity of the disease. He had comparatively a smaller ulcer of about 1 cm which was virtually curable with surgery and follow up. So I didn’t feel it a necessary to counsel and comfort the patient regarding the disease. I filled up all his investigation reports and looked at his face to explain to him where to get them done. His eyes were flooding with tears. Then only did I realize that for me even though it was only an early lesion, for the patient he was diagnosed with a disease which for a layman was virtually incurable. I took time in explaining him that he need not worry and to get the investigation done early so that he can be operated at the earliest. He wiped his tears and touched my feet while leaving. But I am sure that it needs more than words to comfort his heart.
Tears, be it of male or female had been given importance from time immemorial. But men are always reluctant to open up naturally or forcibly for the fear to lose their macho. My better half always makes fun of me when she sees my eyes fill at the end of the movie. Recent studies have shown that crying increased life expectancy by acting as a stress relieving act and also a means to excrete toxic metabolites. Dr William Frey, who studied the physiology of tears and author of 'Crying: The Mystery of Tears', says: 'It is no accident that crying has survived evolutionary pressures. Humans are the only animals to evolve this ability to shed tears in response to emotional stress, and it is likely that crying survived the pressures of natural selection because it has some survival value.' So women don’t under estimate the role the operas play in prolonging your life expectancy and men don’t be ashamed to wet your partner’s shoulders when you feel so.
- By the eldest son
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