Tuesday, October 26, 2010

When you are on the move -

I travelled to Delhi last week. Before I took my flight, I was already feeling early symptoms of fever, but wrote it off as common cold.

However, the day after I reached Delhi, I was down with temperature. The following day, I visited a Doctor. Being, my first visit, he took 15-20 mins just to understand my history, my allergies, and more since sinusitis has been troubling me since a while.

Considering the prevalence of malaria and dengue nowadays, the doctor asked me to do a CBC and some other tests. I had got these tests done just 2 days before for my insurance - Obviously, I had not expected the illness and hence was not carrying my reports. I didn't even recall the results. So another round of tests was unavoidable.

One may concur, if you have fever, even if you sitting for as little a 15-20 mins,,, you body starts paining. I was at the clinic for around an hour, first the waiting , and then the consulting.

Fortunately, my tests were negative (the results only came out in the evening, so I had to visit the doctor a second time), and doctor suggested it was just a viral.

The point here is - a lot of time got consumed here just to get to the diagnosis, which would reduce substantially if I would be carrying my medical history and my reports. Obviously it’s not practical to carry your medical file everywhere you travel, but certainly if it is available on a chip, or a cd or even on web - it should be greatly helpful.

2 comments:

  1. A PHR (Personal Health Record) can easily fit in a mobile SIM card!

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  2. Having your PHR with you can prove especially useful in cases of an emergency like an accident. You can get more effective treatment if the doctor who's treating you already knows that you are diabetic.

    ReplyDelete