Diagnosis and Cure

For the past three weeks, I’ve been having a dull, heavy feeling in my forehead. It starts from the moment my blue eyes flick open, and it continues on and off over the course of the day. This heaviness is occasionally accompanied by dizziness. I end up at my desk at 4 PM with my hand on my forehead, trying to rub it out.

I have an explanation. Fluorescent lighting. Those white tube lights so loved by Indians (no doubt, they’re cheaper), when coupled with relentless ceiling fans, create a subtle, strobe light effect. When you’re trying to write a proposal, a strobe light is, well, irritating.



So, I went to the doctor after work yesterday. His name is Dr. M, and he is the uncle of a friend. Dr. M’s waiting room was empty, so I saw him immediately. Let me be frank. The man is quite odd. He is verging on 75, and seems to have not yet discovered the notion of personal grooming. There is hair growing out of every part of his head. It’s sprouting from his ear rims, the inside of his ears, and coming out of his nose. It’s colonizing his cheeks, having thoroughly exhausted the space on his sideburns. His eyebrows are a hanging garden of salt and pepper vines. To be honest, I’m not sure how he can hear or breathe.

He has a quaky voice that manages to run deep and high in the course of a single word (like the old voiceover on the Smucker's jam commercials…"With a name like Smucker’s it Has to be Good"), and his hearing is not excellent. But, he’s sweet, and like a grandparent that you listen to selectively, he supplies bits of “wisdom” amidst a slew of words that pass the time.

Other Indian doctors I’ve been to make and prescribe their own yellow and pink pills like they’re playing out their own version of Valley of the Dolls. Comparatively, Dr. M seems quite innocent, after you get past the face shrubbery.


So, I sat down on Dr. M’s examination table and told him about my ailments. He flashed a standard yellow flashlight in my eyes and told me to follow the shine, and he asked about my eating habits. He took my pulse and blood pressure. Then he inquired about the amount of time I spend in front of the computer. About 10 or so hours, I estimated. Say what? Problem solved for Dr. M.

Diagnosis revealed: You have brain fag, he said. Pardon? Brain fag. It comes from eye fag, and now it’s turned into brain fag.

Pretty sure that Dr. M doesn’t know about the other meanings of the word fag, so I heard him out. Apparently, my brain is tired. Which explains why I couldn’t remember how to spell budget the other day. My eyes are sore from looking at the computer—which means that I definitely shouldn’t be writing about this little episode right now on this computer (shame on you for contributing to my woes). The “eye fag” pain is being transferred to my frontal cortex, which is causing brain fag.

I didn’t have the courage to ask Dr. M why he was using the word fag…because he launched into something about fantasizing in order to fix it.

You need to fantasize more, he said. Do you meditate? I nodded. Well, do that, and lay down and fantasize more. Awkward, no, coming from a grandfather figure? Nod, smile, right right.

The Japanese do it, he said. And they have one of the healthiest aging populations on the planet. They meditate and do crosswords. It’s good to stimulate the brain that way.

He prescribed a pill and a tonic, more fantasizing, and less computer time—only 2 hours a day. Bloody unlikely, I thought.

All this wisdom and cure cost for $6, only.