Senegal 6: The gift

A polite fellow, my age, comes in and declares he has had a sore crotch for about week. After some brief questioning, he drops his strides to reveal an ulcer the size of a 10-cent coin on the base of his goodybag. It's the first time I've ever seen such a thing outside of a textbook. I get some good advice that it's probably genital herpes, and look up the hospital's treatment manual: gentian de violet. It sounds like a dye we used in microbiology pracs in med school. He gets told to abstain and come back in a week.

He returns a week later, and his hands are dyed purple. I confess I hesitated to shake them when he came in. He states that no progress has been made except that all his undergarments are now similarly dyed purple. The examination confirms this sad state of affairs. He can tell I am at a bit of a loss. He reconfirms that there has been no fooling around on either partner's part, so it is mildly suspicious when he requests a test for syphilis. Surprisingly, he returns two days later with a positive result. The treatment for syphilis is fortunately very easy - a single injection, once a week for 3 weeks. He is sent to the salle d'observation for his first shot.

Another week passes. He comes back and he is a changed man. It is totally gone. The next week he bypasses the queue and comes straight to my room to tell me, happily, it has not returned. He is stoked. He asks me where I live and invites me over to dinner. This strikes me as potentially awkward and I politely decline. Undeterred, he returns the following week for his third and final shot, and presents the good doctor with a gift, pictured below, for his brilliant diagnostic skills.

And this is how the first ever present I received from a patient was inspired by a positive result from a test that the patient had to remind me to order.