Syedyshev Oleg
Syedyshev Oleg

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Humorous Essays Based on students' memories

"All have died
except for those who are alive, and those whom we remember"Confucius

Essay 154. Shock therapy

I learned what shock therapy was already after graduation from the institute, when I was majoring in psychiatry. We were told about it and showed in all details varieties of shock treatment such as electroconvulsive therapy and insulin-shock therapy. Much later I also learned about shock therapy in economics.

I will honestly admit that about the fifth kind of shock therapy I’ve learned just recently, even though I worked in medicine for more than twenty five years. It turns out that a unit of morbid anatomy of a hospital is called the fifth shock therapy.

After all I was going to write not about myself, but about a KSMI (Kemerovo State Medical Institute) graduate Victor Kiss. Those who follow my opuses already know him from the essay “Good Luck of Victor Kiss”. So if a person is lucky, he is lucky in everything. This is I am about Victor. As a curious guy and also a diligent student, Vitya never missed an opportunity to work a shift at a hospital. He worked at both a city clinic #9 at Kirovskiy district and a city hospital #3. Most of all he liked to work at a traumatology department of the city hospital. And it was there where he learned one of methods of shock therapy. It was the one neither of psychiatry nor of economics, but of traumatology. The method was quite unique and had not been described in any traumatology text books before. Vitya was keen to learn something special, that all the rest did not know. So here is what happened. Once in his fifth year Vitya was working a shift at an admission department of the city hospital #3. It should be mentioned in what company he was lucky to work. The company was the right one: legendary G.Y.Kutikhin, a chief traumatologist, and a doctor O.G. Shumilov, who was also teaching at a medical college of Kemerovo and brought a group of his students to practice during the shift. All in all there was a big crowd, and it was fun till they brought a patient with a craniocerebral trauma. That was written in a referral from an “ambulance”. Well and the patient himself was heavily drunk, he was stiff drunk, hammered, you name his state the way you wish, but it was a fact that he was too drunk to make sense.

And now imagine a two meters tall goon who weighted not less than one hundred and fifty kilos. And what was the most amazing that bastard, sorry, the patient did not react when he was spoken to, but he did not shut his mouth up, belching forth so ingenious swearing, that even hard core nurses of the admission department blushed, like, forgive me for saying it, girl students. I will add that there was a wound on the head of that marvel, there was blood all over him, and he also had motor anxiety. The first victim was a nurse who with the words: “Who did that to you, poor thing…” approached him to take the bandage off his head.

However the goon pushed her and she flew like a bit of fluff to the corner and almost overturned a table with medical instruments. And swears followed her. Shumilov was trying to explain and demonstrate to his students on the patient the methodology of examining of an injured patient and performing of initial care. Though the hulk swore at him in a way known in that kind of situations and raised his hand against the medical college students; and those, poor things, shrank into corners, being reasonably afraid that they would get it hot just for nothing. And there came Kutikhin. To everybody’s surprise the dork stood calmly the examination and went accompanied by the same nurse to do an X-ray test. However in about twenty minutes they were returning with swearing again. He again tore the bandage off and was using foul language addressing everybody. Even to Kutikhin, when he had a look at a picture and said that there were no fractures, the troublemaker showed a fist and cursed him spelling every swear word. And what did Kutikhin do? He gave an order to bandage him and send home, and left for the traumatology department. And there the patient absolutely lost control; he was shouting, making a brawl and gave a kick to a nurse passing by.
Everybody who knows O.G.Shumilov, picture a nice, polite and well-mannered man.

However at that moment, after the last scurvy trick of the boot, Shumilov literally threw his doctor’s smock off, threw it away and with the words: “My doctor’s uniform did not allow me to give you a punch in the jaw”. Who could imagine that with two practically unnoticeable moves, he, let’s say delicately stopped the hooligan and sent him down the stairs out in the street. All the present at the admission department… Did you see a scene from “The Government General”? (also known as “The Inspector General, is a satirical play by a dramatist and novelist Nikolai Gogol. Originally published in 1836, the play is a comedy of errors.) The situation was exactly the same. Everybody was standing paralyzed. And then they happily rushed to greet and thank Shumilov. He only said addressing his students: “Shock therapy! Sometimes it’s very efficient”.

P.S. Afterwards it became known that the man was placed in the city hospital, but he did his best to pretend that he did not remember anything, when he met students and doctors he had been insulting.

1 May, 2012

© Copyright: Oleg Syedyshev, 2012
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Translated by Viktoria Potykinato content ↑


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