Visit to the hospital

Last Saturday I needed to go to the St. Stephens Hospital to get my knee checked. It’s a government hospital and they make sure you feel that way. First of all, the staff (most of it, but I’m sure there are exceptions) is as indifferent to a visitor’s problems as…I was going to say the man in the street, but men in the streets are not as indifferent.

My mother had accompanied me to the hospital. She wanted to fetch a wheelchair for me because my knee had a terrible ache. She was made to run from one ward to another just to get the wheelchair because nobody could give a clear direction, and whomever she asked gave her a direction despite having no idea. After visiting four wards — totally exhausted — she arranged for a wheelchair and a ward boy to push it. Our meeting with the doctor was at 10:30 am but we had reached there at 9:00 am, fearing one or the other delay. The attendant and the nurses who were sitting in front of the doctor’s room to accept the OPD cards were unfalteringly rude to everybody. This is democracy at its best. You feel like you are in a common plane, because no matter who you are (as long as you’re not a minister), you get yelled at thoroughly just for being face to face with them.

My mother and I submitted the card and waited for the doctor. To pass our time we watched the attendant and the nurses yell at all and sundry. I wonder for how long these people live if they yell so much every day.

At precisely 10:30 am (I was impressed by the punctuality) we were summoned into a narrow corridor — I can bet it was not more than 4-feet wide. Beds with dirty linen were laid in a line like the seats in a narrow rail compartment. The place looked like a junk-room. There was a broken chair there and thankfully I didn’t have to sit on it because I was on a wheelchair. The wheelchair had to be placed at the door of the corridor because there was no space for it to go any further.

I regretted coming there but then the doctor we had gone to see is one of the best orthopaedist in the city. A youngish doctor came to see me. Definitely he was not the doctor we had gone to see but he talked very nicely. He noted down whatever I told him, advised me to get my blood checked for RA (rheumatoid arthritis), and told me that the actual doctor would come at 12:30 pm.

I got my blood checked (I feared getting infected but at that time I couldn’t refuse) and thankfully the RA test came out negative. At 1:15 pm we were again advised to go to the same claustrophobic corridor, now that the doctor had arrived and was checking different patients. This time I had to leave my wheelchair and go there walking on my crutches. The beds that are lined in that corridor are so high (for the convenience of the doctor) that one has to climb up a few steps to lie on them. I refused to climb because of my pain, so the nurse made me sit on the broken chair that could have collapsed any time. There was hardly any place even for the doctor to walk. One by one he checked on the patients, gave answers and allayed fears whenever he could. He passed by without checking me to the adjacent room, maybe because I was not lying on a bed and was simply sitting on a chair. In the room he spent another half-an-hour. Then he came out, and was again passing me by when I called him.

He checked my knees, felt my nerves, made me walk, and then he said I might need an operation to loosen my knees. He couldn’t be sure about the pain as he said a massive wear-and-tear has already happened. Due to the stiffness and a perpetual bent, my knees go through intensive stress when I walk. For the probable operation, he asked me to meet him again with an X-ray of my knee.

I came home, satisfied with the diagnoses, but not sure about the treatment. I have started relaxation exercises and a few homeopathic medicines. There is a lot of improvement. The pain hasn’t completely gone but now I can move around with ease and get up from a chair without much ado. Both Alka and I are sure now that I won’t need the surgery.