Godwin was an exception to the Doctors -paediatrics drama...

When I was in paediatric surgery department doing my clinical postings, one of the major challenges we experienced was the fact that we had to make the little children allow us perform some of the physical examinations which might go as far as using tendon hammers to assess for the Tone, power and reflexes of their joints and muscle functions.

It wasn't always easy because as kids, they don't even know what you're coming to do neither do they know you're trying to get them treated so they could be discharged from the hospital so most of them just keeps crying once they see the white labcoat and then you will have to deal with the crying, your physical examinations you want to conduct and still deal with giving your consultant a correct answer for the questions he or she will throw at you, lol... It was always so tough especially during our clinical exams.

To be honest, most persons in medical school fail this paediatric examination not because they are not smart or brilliant enough but just because they met a patient who wasn't compliant at all hence they couldn't extract the information they needed to pass... That's why most of us will run to adult medicine to deal with adults, because it's a little bit easier atleast with getting the history of the disease, lol.

There was a patient I can never forget, Okeke Godwin, he was a child suffering from Burkitt's lymphoma.... I remember it so well because he was the patient I used for my examination.

Godwin was a 4year old boy and as such I was scared I'll still have the general issue of crying with him but that wasn't the case.
Both Godwin and his mother were very receptive, immediately I told the mum I was there for exam and she should tell me all about the disease, she said okay and told me everything I needed to know to the point of even telling me the ones I didn't ask her.

Source

When it was time for the physical examination of Godwin, he was very compliant; when I brought out the stethoscope, he started folding his shirt even before i told him, like he knew where I wanted to assess...
How did he know?
The apex of them all was when I asked the mum how many times he has been transfused and the mum said 4times, the child told me it was 5times rather.... I needed to know the exact number of times because it's enough to veto fail someone, I wanted to go with the mum's answer but because of how bright the child has been behaving, I reached out to the House officer managing the patient and lo and behold! It was 5times... Jeez
Children of nowadays amazes me honestly...

Even when it was time for injection to be given, unlike the normal drama of 3 doctors giving the injection which we normally see because one doctor will be holding the leg and another the hand while the third one will be giving the injection, only one doctor came and without any drama, Godwin took the injection and didn't even cry at all... Wow, that's unlikely.

At a point, I was just wondering if the boy has already been desensitized by the series of hospital visitations or just that the boy knew we needed to do those things so he could get discharged because the way he took note of the details happening to him was just amazing....

Children are very cute creatures and sometimes they behave in a way you think they already came to the earth before; no wonder the Igbo tribe will always chip in reincarnation, hehehe.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day