Hospitals and Health

 

From Wikiart

When I decided to take a few days’ break from blogging at the end of Feb, I didn’t think the days were going to be as terrible as they turned out to be. I was feeling tired and decided to give my body a little rest. But instead of taking the much-deserved rest, my body started whining and twining. Soon the body ache was drowned by the thumping of a dozen sledgehammers in the head. When I couldn’t bear it any longer, I asked Maggie to accompany me to hospital. She checked the time: one am. It was not quite the appropriate time to disturb people in the neighbourhood for driving us to hospital. “I can drive,” I said. Maggie decided to trust me. She knows that I can be terribly stubborn sometimes.

The road was absolutely empty and it took hardly ten minutes to reach the hospital. The security allowed me to park our car in the doctors’ parking area when I told him I was the patient. I liked the security guy for being so understanding. Like me, he too thought that I would require just a few minutes’ treatment in the casualty.

A very young doctor, who looked like an undergrad student, was on duty. I told her about my headache, body ache, fever, cough, and voicelessness. I had lost my voice; I managed to wheeze out a few words and Maggie filled in the necessary blanks.

The doctor chose to focus on the headache. Later I found out that she was a junior neurologist. As a neurologist, she didn’t find my other aches and problems of interest to her. I was put on an intravenous paracetamol drip. I swallowed a few tablets. The headache subsided. But I continued to cough and Maggie drew the attention of the nurse to my cough. “We’ll tell the doctor,” the nurse said. The petite neurologist had vanished.

The new doctor on duty didn’t come to me. It was already taken for granted by the multi-speciality hospital that I needed neurological care and nothing more, nothing less. Maggie asked the nurse what we had to do when the paracetamol drips were finished. “Wait until the main neurologist comes,” the nurse said. I continued to cough and the nurse continued to ignore the cough. Eventually the hospital brainwashed me into believing that my cough was not a problem that deserved any medical attention.

“When will the neurologist come?” Maggie asked when many other doctors came and went without even throwing a glance at me.

“Nine nine-thirty,” the nurse said.

We had no choice but wait.

“Maybe, we have parked our car in the parking space of the neurologist,” I suggested to Maggie, “and he may be trying to find parking space.”

Then came the bad news. Maggie’s brother passed away at 9.10. He was in a critical condition and Maggie and I were supposed to visit him as soon as my headache was dealt with. The news of his death didn’t come as a shock. But it left us sad.

At around 9.45, Maggie told the nurse that we had to go as early as possible. She told the nurse about her brother’s death. The nurse stared at Maggie and went to the supervisor who made a phone call. “The doctor is coming right now,” the nurse said to Maggie. “Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?” Maggie didn’t answer that. Should someone die for a doctor to attend to you?

Then came an announcement in the PA system of the hospital. All over the 6-storey building, in every room and every corridor, the announcement boomed. “The car number so-and-so is parked in the doctors’ parking space. Please remove it immediately.”

I got up from my bed and asked Maggie to give me the car key. Holding the key in the hand to which a cannula was attached rather prominently, I walked out of the casualty. “Is it your car, sir?” The security at the casualty door asked. “Yes,” I said. “Give me the key, I’ll park your car in the right place.” “Thank you,” I said handing the key to him.

The neurologist came soon enough. He couldn’t identify the cause of my headache. So he prescribed half a dozen different tablets one or a few of which will deal effectively with my ache hopefully. What about my cough and chest congestion? That is not the neurologist’s concern, is it?

As I was lying in that hospital bed, I noticed how all the doctors behaved more or less in the same manner. They were all in a hurry. They listen to one or two symptoms from the patient, assume that the patient is suffering from a particular problem, ask some questions related to that problem – like ‘how many times did you feel like vomiting?’ or ‘and you felt dizzy?’ – all in such a hurry that the patient is not sure whether he was supposed to answer the questions at all.

Maggie and I attended the funeral services of her brother. We are back home. I have lost my voice totally. Maggie is keen to take me to hospital once again. I feel like a little student who is unwilling to go to school. 

I have often wondered whether our hospitals make us more sick than we were earlier.