Storytellers

 Vijayaprasad Gopichandran, 18.06.2023 It was 12 noon, the clouds had closed on the sky, and it was dark, there was a gentle drizzle. The out-patient clinic was lean. The past few days had been oppressively hot and suddenly it was cloudy and pouring since morning. So, people had chosen to stay home. A man about 40 years of age, wet in the rain walked into our clinic. He was wearing a dark blue striped lungi, and a red shirt with the top 3 buttons open. His hair was unkempt and wet in the rain. There was a thick salt and pepper stubble. The look on his face was one mixed with anger, apathy, and irritation. Behind him stood a woman, much smaller than him in stature, with a grim look on her face and her eyes red, probably due to a lot of crying. His body language exuded reluctance as he walked slowly into the clinic and took the seat in front of me.    “Please tell me sir, what brings you to the clinic,” I said in my usual kind demeanour. He gave a shocked look filled with i...

Vijayaprasad Gopichandran, 15.06.2023   I am part of the scientific review committee of our institution and today we had a meeting to discuss research proposals and review them. The meeting ended on an academically surcharged note. I will present the research study which was the cause for this interesting debate and then lay out the premise of the debate.    One researcher from the department of gynecology proposed a study in which she wants to explore the association between obesity and puberal menorrhagia, excessive bleeding during menstruation in adolescent girls. She said that she would enroll adolescent girls who have pubertal menorrhagia in the study and assess whether they are obese or not. The hypothesis was that pubertal menorrhagia is more common among obese girls. In addition to this as a second part of this study, she said she would give these adolescent girls standard treatment for the excessive bleeding and then see whether the obesity influences response to...