“But I wasn’t sickly,” he went on, angry at the memory of that first, unjust accusation. “Between times I was very fit and was always picked for the school team and track events when…”
“Patient Hewlitt,” Medalont broke in. “These episodes of nausea, minor skin eruptions, and the other symptoms that were not related, at least as far as you knew at the time, to the immunization shots. Could they have followed the administration of other forms of medication? A mild palliative for a headache, perhaps, or a painkiller given after an accident during a sporting contest that you were too excited to remember? Or did you eat something you should not have eaten, like uncooked or unripe vegetation?”
“No,” said Hewlitt. “If somebody had butted me in the stomach during a game I would remember it. And if I had eaten something that made me sick, I would have remembered that, too, and especially not to eat it again. I’m not stupid now and I wasn’t then.”
“Just so,” said the doctor. “Please continue.”
Feeling angry and impatient, he continued, as he had done so many times in the past to so many medics who had made halfhearted attempts to hide their impatience while listening to him. He described the sudden onset of a wide variety of symptoms that were apparently without cause and, while inconvenient and at times embarrassing, were never serious enough to be disabling. At the age of nine, five years after he had been returned to Earth, his aunt had taken him to the family’s aging general practitioner. That doctor had made the first positive, or perhaps it was a completely negative, contribution to his problem by deciding not to administer any form of medication whenever his inexplicable and relatively painfree symptoms appeared. There was evidence, the doctor had said, that the number and variety of symptoms increased in direct proportion to the amount of medication administered, so the sensible course was to withhold all medication and observe the results. He could still come to see the doctor if or when symptoms reappeared, but henceforth they would do nothing but talk about them.
He had also been given an appointment to see a psychiatrist, who had listened to him with sympathy during the course of several weeks before telling his grandmother that Hewlitt was a physically healthy, highly intelligent, and very imaginative young man who would grow out of his problem with the approach of maturity.
“I realized later,” Hewlitt went on, “that neither of them believed I had anything wrong with me. The psychiatrist said so in polite polysyllables, but the doctor did the right thing by not doing anything. For three years after his negative treatment, the symptoms were reduced in frequency and strength so that, unless a rash or something appeared on a visible part of my body, I didn’t mention them to anyone. But when I reached puberty, the trouble began happening every few weeks and some of the symptoms were very embarrassing. Even so, the family doctor continued to withhold medication and the frequency of onset began to reduce again. From the time I was fourteen until I was twenty there were only three, well, attacks, but the symptoms and some of the things that happened between times were distressing and very embarrassing … .”
“Now I understand,” Medalont broke in, “why your case history advises against prescribing medication without prior discussion with the patient. Your aged local doctor displayed the good sense that many of us younger and more enthusiastic medics lack, by deciding that when in doubt, and when the condition was not life-threatening, it was better to do nothing. But now that the episodes have become more distressing, you will have to trust us. If you are to be cured we cannot continue to do nothing for you.
“I know that,” said Hewlitt. “Shall I go on?”
“Later,” said the doctor. “The main meal is due shortly and Leethveeschi will scold me if I deliberately cause a patient to starve. Nurse, consultation mode, please.”
A pincer and a digited tentacle rose to touch their respective translators briefly, and thereafter their conversation was completely unintelligible to him. Hewlitt took it for as long as he could, about three minutes, before anger and frustration got the better of him.
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