BY: Dr. Praveen Tripathi, MBBS, MD, Renowa Care
A young male, 28 years old, perfectly healthy, no history of any medical illness, non smoker, never touched alcohol entered my chamber and the first thing he said was “Doctor, please save my life”.
And then he elaborated a story that I hear day in and out with almost the same details. So, the story goes like this. This gentleman got married 6 months back. Like a large number of Indian men, he never had sex before marriage, and was quite nervous about his first night. And as luck would have it, on the night of marriage, the anxiety got better of him and he could not get an erection.
This was an arranged marriage, and there was no emotional connection with the wife. He was quite anxious that if he doesn’t ‘perform well’ and if he is not able to ‘satisfy’ the partner, things could go downhill pretty soon. The source of all this information was of course the friends who had heard all about it from their friends. When erection didnt happen, he tried to make an excuse that he is tired and that they should have sex tomorrow. He couldn’t sleep the entire night.
The next day he saw some videos on youtube, most of them were by quacks with wrong information, and that further increased his anxiety. Scared about the impending night, he called one of his good friends who advised him to go to the chemist and get the magic ‘blue pill’.
The patient took the pill. He thought that the pill should do it for him. Little did he know, that these pills often do not work when the person consuming them is anxious. Sadly for him, the pill didn’t work. Two failures in two nights.
The wife now got a little bit suspicious. She had heard from her friends that all men can think of is ‘sex’ and she had also heard that often men ask for sex 5-6 times in a night. Of course, these are all myths, but when it comes to sex education in India, myths are all we have.
The man, realised that the wife was unhappy. He felt helpless, he did more research and found many videos saying that it’s all because of masturbation. Is that so? Did he ruin his life with his own hands? He saw an advertisement, a doctor claiming “100 % guaranteed treatment”. He looked at the degrees of the doctor, it didn’t say MBBS or MD or MS. The man went to see him nonetheless. The so-called ‘doctor’ offered a package for 30 thousand. And offered some powder and some loose pills. No prescription was given. The man still bought it and started consuming it as advised.
Didn’t help. The problem persisted. The wife went back to her parents’ place. The guy’s parents were informed and insulted. The guy himself was humiliated. It was alleged that he hid that he was impotent and the marriage was a fraud. After consultations with a few more quacks, finally the man entered my chamber and immediately pleaded. “Doc, please save my life”.
All the tests of this person came out to be normal, as usually is the case. All this person and his wife needed were a bit of counselling, a bit of supportive medicines and a bit of sex education. But sadly very few patients with sexual problems get that little bit of help, as a deadly combination of ignorance, genius marketing by quacks, reluctance of mainstream doctors to practice sexual medicine and incompetence of government authorities ensure that these patients with sexual problems continue to suffer.