In late Seventies, when I decided to make pharma selling as my career, I never imagined the surprises awaiting me. Having conditioned and indoctrinated for long in classroom training, where one training manager would have a field’s day on several new recruits in a classroom; and field training, where a manager would convert every bit of field into an improvised classroom, I was compelled to learn that my products were the best. I learnt to believe that everything pertaining to me was the best including my health, obviating the need for me to experiment the medicines I sold.
One of the medicines I promoted to the doctors, to be tried on unsuspecting public was a brand, intended to relieve the symptoms associated with migraine. To improve veracity of sales statements, I was briefed to caution the doctors, that this medicine should not be prescribed during pregnancy and as a standard procedure, not more than four tablets per day and not more than 10 tablets in a week should be prescribed for all others.
In the ’80s during the first trimester of pregnancy, my wife had severe bouts of migraine one night, and demanded me to give the medicine for migraine, which was in my possession as physician’s sample. Her migraine had numbed all her other mental faculties, whereas it had sharpened my bluffing skills, so as to save the foetus growing in her womb from drug induced abnormalities. Without switching on the lights of the bedroom, I stomped across the living room to the store room, where I had kept all the physician’s samples. After getting what I was searching for, I walked up to the bedroom and made her swallow two tablets with a cup of water. After half an hour she felt the headache was bearable and went back to sleep. What I gave her that night was not the medicine intended for migraine but a placebo. Though I avoided a potential disaster by administering a placebo, her migraine continued to be a cause for my headache. She tried different medicines and therapies which enriched many practitioners, but she continued to suffer.
One doctor with a scientific bent of mind suggested her to keep a tab of food she consumed, so that he can discover the food item which triggered her migraine. My wife picked up abundant knowledge about migraine from him, and she learnt that migraine is triggered by hunger, food, tension, and certain spices too. Her methodical documentation of food and spices eaten was of little use, since her migraine was triggered by almost everything. She suffered from migraine after eating Mysorepagh, Onion bajjis, bhel puri, radish sambar and the list was endless. After eliminating many food items including spices, as the source for her migraine, the doctor concluded ‘tension’ as the causative factor for her migraine, and my wife concluded ‘spouse’ as the causative factor for her tension.
A chance discovery of mine rescued her from the sufferings of migraine. When tried on her, the associated complaints of throbbing headache, nausea, photophobia and spousophobia of migraine dramatically stopped, relieving my headaches too. One day I told her after my chance tumbling, that migraine afflicts only intelligent people and her face brightened like a thousand watt incandescent bulb. Her joy was twofold, since science declared her to be intelligent and more because I don’t get bouts of migraine.