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Salute you, Sisters

12 May is International Nurse's Day. 

The only time I spent as many as ten days at a stretch in a hospital was when I fractured my foot following a fall from my scooter. That was four years ago. I lay in the hospital bed with my leg bandaged heavily from knee to foot and raised on a couple of pillows. My surgeon accompanied by a junior doc and a nurse came every morning to examine the condition of my foot. Nurses came at regular intervals to give me medicines as well as to check whether I was following instructions properly. 

There was a particular nurse who came at about 6 o'clock every morning to give me quite a few medicines one of which was an injection. One morning when she came I was in the washroom. She was not quite chuffed with my adventure. I didn't tell her that I was doing it every morning with the help of the walker I had got a relative to steal into my room. I explained to her that I had no other choice in that matter. She understood though she warned me not to let the doctor see me moving out of the bed. 

She came every morning and continued to be on duty till late afternoon. I asked her one day, "Don't you have any day off?"

"Hmm," she hummed reluctantly. She obviously didn't want me to ask her personal questions. 

"I see you on duty every day," I persisted. "And you are very meticulous too," I added. Who doesn't like a good word about herself? But I wasn't offering her hollow flattery. She was good, really good at her job. 

We became friendly enough for me to ask her a few more questions about herself. "How many years have you been here in service?"

"Just completed a year."

"Before that?"

"I was in the Gulf. Then certain family problems brought me back home."

One day, towards the end of my sojourn in that room on the third floor of the hospital on the bank of the Thodupuzha River, I took the liberty to ask her whether she was paid a good salary since she came with a long experience from the Gulf. She refused to answer. But I had established a rapport with her and so I went on. "Rs 20,000?"

She looked at me as if to mean whether I was out of touch with reality. Which hospital in Kerala pays nurses that sort of salary?

It took me a year to discover that the hospitals in Kerala most of which are run by religious institutions paid the nurses as little as Rs 8000 per month. There are a few exceptions, of course. [Today the situation is slightly better due to government interference.]

Kerala is a state that refers to nurses as "angels". Today's Malayala Manorama, a leading newspaper in Kerala, pays a huge editorial tribute to nurses and it is titled, "Angels, Greetings with Folded Hands". I was told last year by a knowledgeable person that this newspaper has a hospital near Kottayam and the nurses are not treated any better there than elsewhere, let alone as angels. 

"You are an exemplary nurse," I told my nurse in that Thodupuzha hospital as I was leaving the hospital after a ten-day stay during which she got just one day off. A weekly off. 

She smiled at me. That's all. Not a word. And the smile was certainly not angelic. It was too sad for that. 



Comments

  1. That's really sad that such people who are performing their duties so efficiently, are being paid peanuts for their selfless service. While the powers that be (read politicians) are earning in crores, for doing literally nothing! What a shame!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A lot of people are exploited in our world, that's the sad truth. A doctor is paid in lakhs and a nurse in the same hospital gets a few thousand. I wonder why such a disparity should exist. The same happens with many other professions.

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    2. Exploitation is, perhaps, the mostly used form of human action...it varies in intensity, impact or intention, but even the least powerful has a suppressed wish to taste its flavour...it pains, but who cares?

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    3. True, most of us are exploiters or will be if given the chance. I believe a good leader can make a big difference. Didn't Gandhi alter the people's views significantly?

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    4. True leadership indeed induces a positive shift in social paradigm....society has much entropy inbuilt.....through years of learning wrong things with strong conviction

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  2. Very good sharing .Nurses are also as respectable as Doctors in this Pandemic and always. I have came to from news that about 800 Nurses have sent to Gulf (Kuwait) recently. A big salute to all the nurses.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. These days nurses are doing a lot of service putting themselves in peril just like the doctors. The service deserves to be appreciated.

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  3. Great to read.
    Kudos to all the nurses _()_

    ReplyDelete
  4. They deserve a lot more than that. At least there is the recognition they have been getting recently. Salute to the selfless heroes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maybe one of the many potentially good outcomes of this pandemic is that the nurses will get a better due. I hope so.

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  5. It is sad but the true state of affairs for the nursing community. Only lip service of being called "angels" but nothing on the ground.In the movie Take off, the principal character states this fact.

    ReplyDelete

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