When I entered the medical college I had no idea what dyslexia was. I learned about it in the course of my studies later. When I entered residency program five and a half years later, I did not have any reason to suspect that I would have to adopt some features of dyslexia voluntarily to survive during residency. By the time I finished the postgraduate course, I had become an expert at it.
Basically it is the right left confusion of dyslexia that one has to voluntarily adopt. Gloves which are supplied for examination of patients are not repacked, sterile ones, but unsterile ones packed and autoclaved in the hospital. When one is examining patients using gloves packed by a nurse who either does not want to check the right and the left side or suffers from dyslexia herself, one may end up with left sided glove when it is meant to be right sided. One may discard it, though it is a waste. Furthermore, the next glove to come out of the drum is also likely to be for the left hand, since the same nurse has packed all gloves in the drum. So one has to either invert the glove before donning it, or put the left hand glove on the right hand. Inverting it is not only boring when one has a lot of patients to examine, but also not very useful because the powder goes on the outside and the non-lubricated inner surface does not slip easily over the hand. Now I pride myself in being able to wear a glove meant for the left hand on the right hand, and work well despite the glove trying to move my thumb and fingers to suit itself. I also pride myself in being able to don size six glove though my hand requires size seven and a half.
What applies to hands applies to feet too. When one enters the labor ward or the operation theater, one has to change from street footwear to clean theater footwear, which happens to be identical to bathroom slippers. Depending on the foot used by majority of people for kicking off when going on or off duty, more number of slippers of one side are broken as compared to those for the other side. I am yet to see an even balance in thirty one years. So one has to wait indefinitely for someone else to exit, whose slippers one can claim, or enter wearing slippers meant for the same side on both feet. I pride myself in being able to wear and walk comfortably without any mishap slippers meant for left foot, one on left foot and the other on the right foot. I pride myself further in being able to wear a size seven slipper on one foot, size eight on the other foot, both belonging to the same side, and still not be bothered by it. I pride myself further in being able to walk wearing slippers with broken straps. Sometimes that results in a high-stepping gait so that the slipper clears the ground when stepping forward. When a strap is broken on both sides and is held in place with the front anchor only, the resultant gait is dragging-foot gait. When the two slippers have straps broken in different locations, the bipedal gait can be quite bizarre and not described in any book on clinical medicine or neurology.
The institute gives the same salary to me and to those who won’t work unless they get the glove of the right side and right size, and footwear of correct size and side. They don’t give me any medal for my application of voluntary dyslexia and adaptability to extreme conditions so as to be able to work without making a lot of noise or developing stress. I am not unhappy, because being able to do what I do is a reward in itself.
