A day in a hospital as a common man

There are many advantages of being born in a well educated family and especially if both your parents are doctors with good enough experience both as public servant and private entrepreneur. All my life I was a never a patient with serious enough ailment to be admitted in a hospital. I wasn't even involved with someone remotely sick in our family to be admitted in a hospital. My granny was a extremely healthy person, who died without too much of a fuss! So it can concluded that I am a zero when it comes to admitted someone in a hospital or taking care of.

When I was needed to admit my mother in a hospital recently, it was a horrible experience even before I could take her to hospital. She developed some sort of dizzy feeling caused by imbalance in the ears. (People with medical background will know that the primary function of ear is not hearing but maintaining the equilibrium of mind with sensory organs. Ears are biological equivalent of a gyroscopes used in flying objects)

When we took her to the emergency centre, it was already in complete chaos. Security guards were harrassed by people eager to meet the patients in the emergency ward. My dad went in to register in the registration, there also it was full with people. It was difficult to seperate the patients from their attendants. My mother was unable to even stand here and there at the registration counter, there were a hundred people each eager to get registered. No wheelchairs, no stretchers, no nurses, no doctors, absouletely no one to help! After a lot of heated arguements, we got to know that since my mom is not too serious, we had to take her to the outpatient wing, which is about 200 meters from where we are. We had to take her on our shoulders there and there, you wouldn't imagine the scene, there were about 500 people crammed into the millennium block. It was as the British call : "organised chaos!"

If a doctor has this kind of experience, then, i can't even imagine what would a illeterate person without any money and contacts would feel there. I had known crowds in hospitals but they were all government run hospitals in villages, where there were crowds only once a week.

Finally, we were able to convince the security that the person in question was a hospital a staff and thus they let us go in. My mom's colleagues came to see her and she was on her feet very soon. I will not forget the harrowing experience which i had to go to, simply cos it was my first experience as a ordinary mortal and not as a 'son-of-a-doctor' experience. I cannot but feel sorry for the innumerable deaths caused by improper diagnosis or situational inadeqacies of hospital staff. Health care, for the Indian govt is all about 'buildings'. They just dont care what kind of people they put in the 'buildings'. All they do is build monumental concrete structures and forget the matter. Hospital should have heart and soul, helpful attendants - people who can calm the relatives of patients.

Government run hospitals are gone to the wolves and the private hospitals are run by the wolves! Take your pick, where would you take your loves ones :)