NEVER FALL ILL IN GOD’S OWN COUNTRY

Why?

Once you fall ill you need a doctor and if the illness has worsened the doctor would direct you to a hospital. Perhaps the doctor you are approaching is employed in government service practicing at home. Perhaps the doctor is attached to several private hospitals and has consultation at home. Perhaps it is a one man show at home. The consultation is a very costly and time consuming affair. People go for this option to out wink the crowd at the hospitals. It matters little whether you are at a Government Hospital or a Private Hospital. The crowds will be large. Your doctor finally would direct you to a hospital when he finds that he could not manage the illness through consultations at their place. By the time you are referred to a hospital you would have spent a fortune on doctor’s fee, medicines, lab reports, x-ray, ECG etc.

The hospital you are approaching would do all the tests and the reports once again. They would tell you the reports you have are all stale and unreliable. Since we value our life very much we would do whatever the doctors suggest unhesitatingly. Money flows through your fingers like water flowing through a tap. The person who prescribes the tests receives a certain percentage of the fees charged. It is a win - win situation for all except the patient.

If you are admitted to a Government Hospital your representative will have to meet the attending doctor at home and pay him a substantial amount. If surgery is recommended, money would have to be paid to the surgeon as well as the anesthetist. If the proper amount has not been paid the patient would have a harrowing time.  The surgeon would delay the surgery as much as he could. The anesthetist may fail to observe the blue tinge on the fingers of the patient that necessitates administration of oxygen at once. The outcome would be catastrophic for the patient and the family. A cardiac arrest would snuff the life out.

It is still worse in a private hospital. They would make you pay through the nose. The administrators like the doctors who prescribe all sorts of tests very much. To them such doctors are real assets. The relatives are presented with bills off and on. The bills are staggered in such a way you would never realize that you are coughing up a large sum. If an orthopedic operates on the patient and if the patient is kept in the post operative ward to be closely monitored it is incumbent upon you to bring all the specialists who are required to attend the ailing patient. An orthopedic – a very experienced one – was firing me on all cylinders for not bringing the specialists who were working in the same hospital. According to him he did not know how to read the monitors that were recording the status of the patient.

There is a space crunch everywhere. While the patient would be asked to lie on the floor if there is no bed available in the Government Hospital the private hospitals play a different game. They would initially keep you at the casualty and would probe whether you would accept a room at the higher end. If you are unwilling to accept the offer and are planning to move the patient to a different hospital you would be offered a room at a lower rate.

Another hazard is the staff at the hospitals that pushes the stretchers, the wheel chairs, the barbers and the attendant who hands over the new born. They would force you to shell out extra money else the patient would have bumpy rides.

Yet another hazard is the doctor who prescribes medicines for you. If you dare to mention that the medicine that has been prescribed may not be good for you as a doctor at a different location at an earlier bout of illness had asked you to refrain from taking that particular medicine as it was harmful for your constitution the doctor would shout at you to proceed to the far away location and have your treatment there.

Recently a young doctor from a private medical college was requested to administer an injection to a patient at the place he was staying. The good doctor was preparing for the Post Graduate entrance examination. The reply was classic. He said he did not know how to administer an injection and that it was the job of the sisters alone.

I am mortally afraid to fall ill in God’s own country.