Dr. Chandra Shekhar Karmakar

Dr. Chandra Shekhar Karmakar started out in anesthesia. FCPS in it. Putting people to sleep. Now he is an assistant professor in physical medicine. Dealing with people who are very much awake and hurting. He went to Hyderabad for a pain medicine fellowship. WFSA fellow too. Just a lot of training for nerve blocks. His room probably has an old ultrasound machine pushed into the corner. People come in with bad backs. Sciatica. The kind of pain that keeps them up at night. They sit on the edge of the examination bed. He just looks at their MRI scans. Tracing the pinched nerves with his finger. Asks them to bend forward. They usually wince. He just nods. Writes down some nerve pills.

Sort of a different approach from regular rehab. He does the injections. Epidurals. Or blocking specific nerves in a frozen shoulder. He uses that ultrasound wand with the cold jelly. Looking at the gray screen to find the exact spot. The needle is pretty long. Patients always get tense. He just tells them to breathe out. Pushes the steroid mix in. Takes maybe ten minutes. He tells them it might take a few days to work. Or maybe it will not work at all. Chronic pain is tricky like that. He pulls the needle out. Puts a small round bandage over the dot of blood. Tells them to sit outside for a bit. He washes the jelly off his hands. Throws the paper towel in the bin.