YOU MUST LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES - DR. T. DIVAKAR RAO

You Must Learn From My Mistakes
Dear friends,
I wanted to share all my experiences with you because there is nothing in hiding…our own failures makes us to think better….
When I was doing my 6 months compulsory internship at Eluru district general Hospital Andhra Pradesh in 1995…I had witnessed one interesting case at the Hospital’s causality. It was a case of road accident where two trucks were collided head on…on the High way…
One of the drivers of the truck suffered a comminuted fracture with open wound (tibia protruded out of the skin) of his right leg……
senior doc advised amputation…. (Dr. Amritanjan-don’t confuse... it’s not his real name... but we used to call him...Because he used to advice every patient with c/o pain and sprain to go for the ext. application of Amritanjan…once he mistakenly advised the same to one patient who was suffering from tennis elbow and ac.fissure……the poor patient applied the same to an unusual area and got admitted in surgery ward later…) So his leg was amputated at the level of tibial tuberosity (just below the knee joint)……..
After 1 month the patient came with unusual symptom...That is severe pain in the amputated leg……concerned doctors gave pain killers...And he didn’t get relief….so they tried everything…including amritanjan…but failed miserably….
One day Dr.amritanjan asked me to treat the case in ayurvedic way…. I also gave the same list of medicines which we usually prescribe (various guggul prep,vedanatak,navjeevan,vishamusti,vaat kulantak,brihat vaat chintamani and oils for local application)……(Dr is well patient is in well…kind of treatment)..But the pain was not at all relieved…
To my surprise once again I saw the same patient in our kaya chikitsa ward…taking panch karma therapy for leg pain….
I went up to him and asked him “did you get any relief with panch karma”?
He said “No”
I decided to take up this case very seriouslyIn those days…there was no computer and internet in vogue….. (Today we must call ourselves GINTELLIGENTS AND WINTELLIGENTS because our intelligence is powered either by Google or by Wikipedia all the time, Real intelligent people are like an oasis in a desert now a days)…so I went up to my library and got one book called PAIN (I forgot the name of the author of that book...1200 pages dedicated to pain only)
After reading it for 2 days I found the answer and explained the same to the patient….he discharged after seven days and went home and came back after 3 months….with a smiling face…..
Conclusion-actually he was suffering from the condition known as PHANTOM PAIN…which is an unusual sensation of pain felt by the patients who underwent amputation…of their limbs or with congenital limb deficiency…
Some other causes…1. Spinal cord injury2. after an ext. / internal organ removal (Breast, gall bladder)
Some other symptoms…1. Tingling sensation2. Heat
Cause of pain…It might be due to abnormal growth of nerve fibres after surgery or abnormal activity at cut ends….Treatment which I had given..
1. Explained the condition to the patient first…and did intense counseling
2. Hot and cold fomentation
3. Anxiolytics…like brahmi,ashwagandha,saraswataristam
4. Meditation advised him to go mandir every day and play with kids... ( note-I didn’t prescribe any pain killers)That’s all...
So my request to all my juniors is whenever you get the cases like this… don’t give medicines on a whole sale basis...Try to understand the disease by reading concerned books or by interacting with senior people…thank you…
Last but not the least… Google means 1 followed by 100 zeroes….so one can miss the essential point…so try to read books (with limited pages of course)…..