The worst place of a medical college that I saw,left almost unattended after many hours.
Raghbir Singh Brar
Faridkot
Email:raghbirsinghbrar@gmailcom
There is still a night that is lying indelible in my mind when my father fell sick and was rushed from a private hospital to a government medical college from where, in utter distress, was rushed to a private hospital in Kotkapura.
It was perhaps November 26 when my son Arman came rushing to me saying that papa was serious and chachu had asked me to get the car to rush him to a hospital.
I rose up, where, at my house, me and my cousin were enjoying our evening,without any purse or any warm garments to wear.
Soon ,we were at a clinic of our family doctor from where my father was getting treatment for about a month.The doctor had gone up.
When we requested the attendant, he came down and just before entering his cabin, dictated to us,” Ask him to raise his hands up.”
The hands could not go up as much as they should have gone normally and father was relying on our support.
“He seems to have got paralysis.Admit him to room no…We shall see him in the morning,” the doctor told us and dictated to the compounder to give us the room.
We wondered,by the morning, he would lie in this state.Terrible.
After a few minutes of consideration, we decided to meet the doctor.
I requested the doctor to refer him to a particular hospital in Bathinda.
The doctor ordered his compounder to receive special emergency fees Rs 500 and wrote on the slip,” referred to the so and so hospital in Bathinda.
Before I started driving towards Bathinda, my brother had already contacted my cousin who advised him to rush him to a village quack known for his expertise for paralysis patients.
I drove towards that direction for about 6 kms and then expressed my unwillingness to go to a quake.
“We should go to a medical college instead ,”and I reversed my car in that direction.
At a medical college
As soon as we reached the medical college,father was admitted after some formalities.
The doctors on duty scratched his knees with some car keys,father responded and then they asked us to have his CT scan done.
But unlike private diagnostic centres, The CT scan is not interpreted.
We again were in an emergency ward and the doctors, just before changing their shift, prescribed us some medicines which were immediately purchased and produced with the doctors for administration.But administration was nowhere in sight despite my repeated requests.
An emergency of a patient with attempted suicide by hanging.
In the mean time, a youth who had allegedlly attempted to commit suicide by hanging from a Moga village was rushed in.The patient was hardly breathing,The doctors and other staff was around him.
His father and two others started whispering that he was no more, noting the movements at a machine.
The doctor shouted at them and threatened to ask them to go out and leave the patient.It silenced them.He dictated the attendant to administer the patient with some injection so that he could not feel anything.
The alleged misbehaviour and indifferent attitude of the doctor,videography by the people,rushing of the police
Instead of getting treatment for my father and despite my requests,another drama unfolded.
Some fight had occurred in perhaps a Ferozpur village and there was a gunshot injury to someone.
I don’t know what exactly had happened but the people who rushed the injured to the hospital,captured the illegalities in their mobile.The doctor refused to attend the patient and insisted on the deletion of the video.It wasted a lot of time and then with the intervention of the police, the video was allegedly deleted and the doctor readied to attend the patient.
Another patient about to die, a doctor on an experimental way.
Next to the bed of my father, there was another youth, whose wife alleged that he was badly beaten by some in a marriage ceremony and internal injuries left him in the medical college.
He was being given oxygen and he was in great rouble.By him, his wife was consoling him along with her mother.
The doctor on duty started a procedure.He hung some curtains to hide him but the curtains were not enough,apart from it,his dying cries could be heard.They perhaps injected some big needle in his stomach to get out the fluid.The patient was taking his last breaths and pining.
Soon, the curtain fell on and he’d died of his ailment.
His wife was beyond consolation where there was nobody to console her and they requested some relatives for a vehicle to take the dead body to his home.
My father and the doctors
After all this expired, a nurse tried to give some infection to my father who was absolutely unconscious.
She could not do it successfully.She injected to needle,but it went some other way.She withdrew it,pinned it to the bed sheet.Not having an arm strap to tighten the blood flow in the arm to inject the needle, she drew up a glove,tied around my father’s upper arm and again tried this procedure.
Then the doctor on duty came.He first of all, tried to insert the fluid pipe through his nose, It was unsuccessful.He asked to bring some waterSome patient advised to take a nearby bottle of water instead of getting from the tap.I took the water bottle to the doctor.He took some water into a syringe and tried to pump it through the food pipe,but he again failed.The unconscious father lying as if he were lifeless.I would not bear it.I asked my cousin to stand by the father.
Then the doctor tried to insert the urinary pipe,but despite some attempts ,he failed.
Father was still unconscious.Only few medicines prescribed to him could be administrated.IT was going to be 3 AM.My brother and one cousin had already left for home.
Then we received a marching order to leave the emergency ward,even when my father was in a very critical condition and unconscious.
“He is being shifted to ward no so and so,” the duty staff said.
‘There are our specialists and you will get better care,’ they said.
Me,the son of my Mana ji,my mother and bhua ji obeyed it and security guards were very helpful from the admission to the exit of the hospital.
Soon, we were in the ward.There was hardly any bed.Some people, and the patients accommodated and a space to place a man was created.
But the stink there was not bearable.The stuffed patients and their wards were there.
“Shame on you (Dur Fitte Muh thode).A voice came from nowhere as if father cried from somewhere.Where have you brought me? As if he had asked.
It badly shook my conscience and was as a sharp slap on my face.
I immediately decided to get him admitted to some private hospital.
“You must write that you are leaving on your own will,” the doctor there told me in an authoritative way.
Then he handed me a form to put my signatures on.
“No,said I.You fill up the form and I shall put my signatures then only in English or Punjabi as dictated by you in Hindi,” I replied.
The doctor was furious.
When we left the medical college, it was without any help,any medical care and sheer wastage of time.
Again at a private hospital in Kotkapura
By dawn, my father was admitted to a private hospital in Kotkapura where he took last breath on December 3.
“There was a patient who had suffered a heart attack and was rushed to that hospital.But the doctor there did not budge to give her an antacid capsule despite her dying requests.Pay us and We shall give her an injection,otherwise shift her to Bathinda,” the compounder said.
“We can not give you anything,” he said while the woman was crying.
The humanity was dead,lifeless there as the hospital did not offer her any first aid to save her life .
Her family,most probably, was waiting for money and then an ambulance while the patient was very critical.
I was again a mute spectator.If I could offer her some antacid and blood thinners,”.
But there was a deadly silence,capturing the souls.
I was absolutely a mute and helpless spectator during all the 4-5 days,without any money to further shift him to a much better medical facility.Neither could I stand up against the system,nor against my own people all the way.
The consolatory words again from that doctor
“The people have truck loads of money to buy lives if they could.You tried your best and rest is upon the God,’ there were the consolatory words of my family doctor.
“Then one suffers from paralysis, there are many more complications which further add up to the problems,” he said when I visited him to have treatment for my much higher blood pressure.