Whenever any unhappy, unfortunate event takes place, online protest platforms such as Change.org, for instance, send me e-mails. I mostly join the online signature campaigns in the hope for a healthy, happy society and a better future. It was but natural that I would get many such appeals, given the horrific Kolkata incident.
I signed each one as I do strongly think that conscientious doctors are next to gods, and they do deserve respect and security. Equally true it is that they are over-burdened. Even after (as before) the COVID years, the doctors' lot continues to be tough, hard. Sure the Health system in our country needs a haul.
Yet one got the feel that the Kolkata tragedy was more a women's safety issue. Undoubtedly, goonda-ism in hospitals by patients' relatives sure needs tough treatment, given the issue of doctors not getting their own comfort zone at the workplace. In a way, related to this concept is a doctor's basic, human(e) inalienable right to some rest after a gruelling schedule, which unfortunately led to the tragic heinous crime.
What could be the solutions? Long term policy decisions such as budgetary allocation enhancement, better investment and funding for the medical sector, especially the goverment hospitals, are very much the need of the hour. Beyond such monetary allocations, I suppose, there is a 24 x 7 need for campus counsellors who counsel the relatives whose patient's health is in a precarious condition. Thus there would be less fracas on the premises that should not allow relatives in huge groups, for instance.
Though this particular incident at Kalkatta shows the carelessness of the system in multiple ways, unmistakable often is the cavalier attitude and rude indifference of the medical fraternity as well. Let me give two examples thereof which I have myself faced/suffered.
Well, I wanted the learning licence for driving a car. At the RTO office, I was told to get a vision test certificate from Sassoon. In the concerned department there, there was this gem of an ophthalmologist who casually told me that I suffer from myasthenia gravis! Wanna know why? Well, due to use of hard lenses for a decade or so, my upper eyelids look as if drooping.
Well, as I look half my actual age, he thought I would be shattered. Instead, I found the entire situation rather amusing. So I consoled him by talking equally casually about Amitabh Bachchan's steely reserve/resolve which helps him live with the auto-immune condition.
In the other department from where I needed another signature, the M.D. was furious that I was so advised! Well, suppose, if I were an extreme hypochondriac, what would have happened? How can anyone be so heartless, especially with a patient!?!
Well, in January 2021, because she was fed with a huge dollop of the breakfast cereal, Aai started coughing as the stuff had entered her windpipe. Her b.p. was fluctuating wildly. Despite my utter panic, I was trying everything I could. The local doctor, on phone, advised me to administer oxygen to her! COVID years! I somehow got an ambulance, and took her to one of the major hospitals in Pune, her regular check-up institute.
She was admitted at all after huge dirty glares at me and, of course, due to the generous intervention of her gerontologist. She soon settled down to as much normalcy as possible. All along, the Emergency Department doctors kept on telling me continuously to be prepared for anything any second!
As if this was nothing, when she was kept in the intensive care unit for initial observation before shifting her to the normal ward, there was this wonder of a doctor who asked me why I got her to hospital. Was it just to get her oxygen? At 80 plus, why did not I allow her an end at home? He, unluckily I did not get his name, hectored on and on for almost an hour!
I was bamboozled. Well, does not a senior citizen, if she is not a COVID patient, have any right to health care (heavily paid for at that)? True, the doctors ARE over-worked. How about the family care-giver? How does she produce oxygen at home? How about her tense feelings? Her being tired? Who cares, right?
Well, in the senior citizen section where she was transferred next morning, with most of the patients, nurses were as casual as possibly can be. One evening, since none bothered to take Aai's blood sugar despite my twice reminding at the nurses' pool , I requested the night duty resident doctor at about 11.30 p.m. The lady flew in to a rage for no rhyme nor reason, and started screaming at me! Over all, the nurses used to be so casual and unconcerned that through a friendly one, I learnt the feeding process and urine bag techniques myself!
I think, unfortunately, this is mostly how the medical fraternity behaves. True, they ARE over-worked, they are tired. But it is a life and death situation for the patient, too. The caretaker members of the family are no fools either. It is just that they have to depend on doctors and nurses.
Well, I have thence decided that when my end comes, I would not use/go for any medical intervention. Hope I die that way. And, anyways, I am going to donate every possible organ and even the cadaver so that the great medical fraternity does not experiment on poor suffering souls, the helpless patients and their hapless relatives!
Pratima@August 14 was the day the Partition happened. Some fourteen million were displaced. Some two million died. There were ghost trains full of dead bodies. Millions and millions of women suffered horrible ill-treatment. Reading Partition novels is like suffering an oozing deep wound. Well, the current Bangla Desh situation, hopefully limping to normalcy, seems to prove that the continent has not learnt (m)any lessons!
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